The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘You encounter racism on every level’
Mets’ Smith reflects on being an African-American in the US
Dominic Smith, like many other athletes, has had to transition his platform from one crisis to another.
The four-year Mets veteran started his spring helping sports’ campaign to pause in the wake of the growing coronavirus outbreak throughout the U.S. Now, he’s refocused his social media feeds on speaking out against racism and social injustice during the third week of protests calling for justice for George Floyd and the many other victims of police brutality and white supremacy.
“When I got drafted in 2013 and left Los Angeles, I finally understood what my parents have been teaching me my whole life,” Smith, 24, wrote in a post to his Instagram and Twitter pages on Sunday. “As a black man in America you encounter racism on every level. Your parents prep you for it. They prep you for routine police stops. They prep you on how to talk to people with respect.
“When you have one strike against you (your skin color) you have to make the people you come across like you, and you do it with respect, with a smile, with love,” Smith explained. “I didn’t understand it as a kid. I went to predominantly black schools my whole life, so when I got into the real world, it hit me. I saw how we were oppressed firsthand. I saw how I wasn’t equal and treated unfairly just because of my skin color. Without people even trying to get to know me, they already had a perception in their head of who I was.
“I’m not saying all people have prejudice or are racist because they’re not,” Smith continued. “I’m just speaking on personal experiences I’ve had.”
Smith isn’t the only black baseball player — or professional athlete in general — who knows this and certainly won’t be the last to share the ugly truth of what racism looks like, even in its smallest form.
On Friday, ex-Yankee and ex-Met Gary Sheffield, via the Players Tribune in an essay titled, “Do You Believe Me Now?” shared how he was brutalized by Tampa police in 1986 while still a prospect in the Brewers minor-league system. Sheffield was with Mets ace Doc Gooden, who was also beaten by cops.
“Another name that, on more than one occasion, could’ve easily been added to that long list (of those who died at the hands of police)? Gary Sheffield,” he wrote. “I was with my uncle Dwight Gooden and some friends at a University of South Florida basketball game. As we were leaving in three separate cars, we were all pulled over without cause. The police detained my uncle — put him in cuffs and slammed him face-first to the ground. They proceeded to beat all of us unmercifully.”
The long list Sheffield refers to includes Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis who was killed while in police custody in May; Breonna Taylor, a black woman who was shot and killed by police issuing her a warrant in her own home; Ahmaud Arbery, a black man in North Carolina killed by white supremacists while out jogging, and countless others. Smith also expressed his outrage for the many who’ve lost their lives because of senseless acts of violence and bigotry.
“It shouldn’t have taken the death of so many innocent men and women for the world to take notice,” Smith wrote. “And if we didn’t have social media or smart phones, how many more innocent lives would we have lost? SILENCE KILLS.”