ATHLETES, NO MORE SILENCE
Especially now, your voices are needed to create positive change in society
For a long time — too long a time — athletes considered it best to be seen and not heard.
Mustn’t risk offending the people who sign the paychecks. Don’t want to wade into a controversy that could hurt the team’s image or, worse, their own. They were only football players or basketball players or coaches, what could they possibly add to any conversation?
A lot, as it turns out. Fortunately for a nation increasingly battered, bruised and desperate for something to bridge the divides, they are finally raising their voices.
“It’s time to look in the mirror and ask ourselves what are we doing to create change,” LeBron James said Wednesday night during a powerful appearance at the ESPY Awards in which he, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade called on fellow athletes to advocate for change.
“Speak up. Use our influence. And renounce all violence,” James said. “And most importantly, go back to our communities, invest our time, our resources, help rebuild them, help strengthen them, help change them. “We all have to do better.” Despite what Charles Barkley once famously said, athletes are role models. They might be reluctant ones, but the importance sports have in our society gives athletes sway far beyond the court or the field. Besides cementing our tribal allegiances, they influence how we spend our time and how we spend our money.
Nike makes hundreds of different shoes in part because some kid is going to beg his parents for the latest LeBron model while his buddy across the street holds out for the Kyrie 2 iD’s. There are Seattle residents hooked on Skittles simply because they’re Marshawn Lynch’s favorite candy. Schools often see applications increase after they win a national title.
So, yes, there is weight in everything athletes say and do.
“Our society values the views and inputs of athletes as members of society. As one of those people, you have an obligation to use that platform to make society a better place,” said Chris Kluwe, the former Minnesota Vikings punter known for his outspokenness, particularly on social issues. Especially now. American society is deeply polarized, as divided as it’s been in years, and politicians seem more intent on protecting party lines than the people they represent. Forty-nine people were killed in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, and Congress rejected calls for gun control.
Two more black men were shot and killed by police officers despite repeated pleas for something to be done about inherent racial bias. Officers were targeted in retaliation, including five who were killed in Dallas.
The rage that’s been simmering just beneath the surface is finally bubbling over. If people in power refuse to do anything, then people with a platform must.
“Things are so bad right now, we should all be speaking out. Every professional athlete should be talking about this. How will things change if we don’t speak out?” Washington defensive lineman Ricky Jean-Francois said in an interview with Bleacher Report.
“I hear about Black Lives Matter, and I understand why that is. But I don’t care about the ‘black lives’ part. I care that every life matters,” Jean-Francois said. “We are having our sons and daughters die. We are having police officers die. You put a bullet in someone’s head, you are taking them away from friends and family. That’s all that should matter.”
Rather than telling athletes to quiet down, we should be asking them to speak louder.
It’s no secret that many athletes come from the impoverished communities that have been the flashpoint for recent troubles. James grew up with a young, single mother in gritty Akron, Ohio, and has often said he easily could have been another sad statistic. Sharing his experiences and those of his friends will resonate far more deeply with upper- and middle-class America than the cries of any protester.
Be it Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali or Billie Jean King, the athletes who’ve made the greatest difference have done so because it was personal. It wasn’t just a cause to them, it was them.
“The (public) needs to under- stand the seriousness of this,” said Louis Moore, an associate professor at Grand Valley State who specializes in sports history and African-American history. “Athletes need to talk about the lack of freedom and what it was really like for them growing up.
“We really don’t dig down and hear about hard it was.” But we need to. We have to. Athletes speaking up won’t solve all of our problems, but they might help us find some common ground. Even that would be better than where we’re at now.