‘Change Doesn’t Happen With Just Talk’: NBA Playoffs Return. But Athletes Fight On
The foregoing was the headline of a tweet by Tom Goldman, dated 27 August 2020. It came one day following the spectre that confronted the NBA in the USA, and carried a photo credited to Kevin C Cox AP, the caption of which read, ‘An empty court and bench are shown with no signage following the scheduled start time of Wednesday’s NBA playoff series. NBA players made their strongest statement yet against racial injustice Wednesday when the Milwaukee Bucks didn’t take the floor for their game against the Orlando Magic.’
The foregoing represents a stance taken by NBA players in the aftermath of the brutal murder of George Floyd, who was unknown to all of the players who so proudly acted on his gruesome demise in what must have been a heinous racist act.
The Goldman commentary stated, “The decision came after lengthy and sometimes angry discussions …in which players debated the merits of starting back up versus cancelling the season entirely.”
It was LeBron James who tweeted, “Change doesn’t happen with just talk!! …It happens with action and needs to happen NOW! ….For my @IPROMISESchool kids, kids and communities across the country, it’s on US to make a difference. Together. That’s why your vote is @morethanavote. #BlackLivesMatter.”
The stance by some of the most highly paid sports personalities shocked the NBA leadership as well as much of American and global society.
The fact that so many in high places were surprised at the action of the NBA star players reveals the extent to which the monied interests in societies around the world have come to believe that ‘money rules’ and that ‘everybody is for sale’.
The reality is that global sport thought nothing of the horrific murder of George Floyd. He was ‘a nobody’. Indeed, many may well have thought to themselves, ‘black people are murdered every day in the US and elsewhere in the world, so what’s so special about the case of George Floyd’. The reality is even more gruesome in that the whites have been killing black people and natives in the Americas, Africa and Asia, since conquest. This is nothing new.
Somehow the monied interest that control sport around the world, have offered mere palliatives instead of aggressive action in the face of continued racism in societies in which they ply their trade.
Our sordid sporting history
Even as the global sport fraternity enjoyed the benefits of billion-dollar windfalls from sport competitions, they simultaneously sustained the disgusting practice of racism through the ages, just as they did likewise in respect of the numerous other social ills they spawned all around them discrimination against women, ethnic violence to the point of genocide, to name a few.
One of the most debilitating legacies has been pointed out, most graphically, by Frantz Fanon, of the French Antilles. His psychological training enabled him to understand more readily the excruciating impact that racism has had on the psyche of the colonised peoples.
As one follows the resurgence of racism around the world, sporting organisations continue to place revenue generation and economic largesse well ahead the interests of those discriminated against, everywhere and in every form.
In the global Olympic Movement, millions remain almost duped into believing that there is a direct relationship between the billions invested in the hosting and sponsorship of the Games and the values they seem to insist are embodied in Olympism.
The economic largesse so freely dispensed amongst Olympic Committees around the world may well be seen as a mechanism that allows leaders in sport to, in turn, lord it over the sports associations and their athletes in their respective countries, without necessarily taking the time to evaluate the real, psychological impact that the system imposes on the latter, in the process.
Few of our sport leaders have as yet reached the point where they understand the way in which sport has been globalised as a new model for the systemic exploitation of peoples and yet another forum for the retention of the values that have always been used to subjugate, oppress and discriminate against people.
For centuries, at the global level, we have witnessed the adoption of sports that can readily be transformed into billion-dollar enterprises, enriching the few while exploiting the many. While starting with idealistic claims of grassroots participation they ultimately craft a small grouping of elite athletes who become so enriched that they run the risk of joining the ranks of the exploiters, bewitching the poor.
The world is led to believe that somehow by creating successive generations of elite athletes we have somehow changed the social dynamic of seemingly endless corruption, discrimination of all types and untrammelled bigotry.
Awakening
Some athlete shave had the benefit of an awakening to reality as their consciences cry out for justice.
Max Millington, in a piece on Criminal Justice, on 8 September 2020, addressed the timelines of ‘Athletes Speaking Out Against Racial Injustice’ since the murder of George Floyd. In his piece he nonetheless observed that this is not a new phenomenon, even though those speaking out remain decidedly few.
Millington wrote, “Athletes have been fighting against racial injustice for decades, from Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ legendary fist-raising during their medals ceremony at the 1968 Mexico City Summer Olympics to Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem against police brutality in 2016.”
Of significance too is the fact that whenever athletes stand up in protest against injustices of one sort or another, the responses that are most critical of their actions are the monied interests that wield effective dominance over the international and national economies as well as those political elite, whose maintenance of political power is inextricably linked to the former.
It should be noted that the awakening of consciousness amongst some of sport’s elite athletes has often come at great personal sacrifice, although this is not particularly well known.
Two years ago, for example, Lewis Hamilton, started what he labelled, the Hamilton Commission. The visionary was pained at the near absence of people of colour in his field, motorsport. The Commission’s home page noted, “As the first Black driver in Formula 1, Sir Lewis Hamilton was always aware of the lack of diversity across the motorsport industry. But this underrepresentation is not just limited to the driver pool, and also includes those who work in the garage and the engineers in the factories too.
After reviewing the lack of diversity within the end of season photo in 2019, Lewis was spurred to take action and set out to understand the specific barriers to the recruitment and progression of Black people within UK motorsport. Lewis has always been vocal about the need for real industry wide change, but in order to make this change happen himself, he needed to know the facts.
As a result, Lewis formed The Hamilton Commission, alongside The Royal Academy of Engineering, which presented an opportunity to simultaneously address the underrepresentation of Black people in UK motorsport, as well as the STEM sector.”
When the Commission had completed its work after nine months of intensive research, Hamilton declared, “I am proud to have published The Hamilton Commission report, Accelerating Change: Improving Representation of Black People in UK Motorsport, alongside The Royal Academy of Engineering. Through this report, I feel that we have a clearer understanding of what is preventing the motorsport industry from being truly representative. I am committed to turning these recommendations into action and making real, lasting change for the better.”
This is just another important project started by a visionary athlete who needed no prompting by any existing sport institution eager to maintain the status quo by declaring itself ready to change before it is changed. He is a change agent by dint of his remarkable and persistent analysis of the world in which he has been socialised and the sport he has chosen as his life’s work. The harsh realities of discrimination spurred him into action, founded on the activism of whose who went before him – Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and so many others.
Hamilton has recently started yet another initiative, consistent with what he has already done. He is teaming up with “Extreme E to promote diversity in motorsport. Each team in Extreme E will create a position for a mechanic or engineer from an under-represented background.”
We are also told that ‘Hamilton, who owns the X44 team in the all-electric off-road series, said it “will create genuine opportunities for the next generation…I can’t wait to see what the candidates achieve,” he added.’
Hamilton is further quoted as saying, “We know from the findings of The Hamilton Commission that our industry is a tough place to break into, particularly for those from underrepresented backgrounds, which is why it’s so important…Extreme E is aware of the substantial barriers of opportunity and bias that exist throughout the motorsport talent pipeline, from primary school age to those already in the industry.”
Aggressive agenda is now an imperative
The time has come for people in sport, athletes in particular, to engage in critical self-analysis, in respect of what is happening in the industry.
Sport became an industry, less because of the soppy philosophical mumbo jumbo that has so often been fed to unsuspecting youths, but more because of its immense economic potential that allows the few to once more use the poor to enhance their already sustainable positions of wealth and attendant power.
Sport leaders of poor countries must wake up and understand the dynamics of sport’s realities. The corruption in FIFA has left the sporting body completely unfazed. In contrast to the response of some elite corporations in the wake of Tiger Woods’ personal intransigence, not a single one of FIFA’s sponsors, found the social conscience enough to cause them to speak out against the corruption that had been unearthed or to withdraw their sponsorship. Money was far more important.
The knee-jerk reaction and comments from the IOC President of the day when FIFA initially expressed consideration of having its World Cup more frequently, did not appear to have been out of concern for the athletes who would be involved. Instead, the response appeared to have been much more about the impact such a change would have on the economic fortunes of the existing four Olympic Games in any given quadrennial.
In a similar vein, sports people must face up to the fact that for all the talk of gender equity, the major beneficiaries have been white women, with the coloured women still in the cellar position, the afterthought.
Women in sport are yet to do the research and acknowledge that the mere imposition of percentages of them in positions of decision-making in sporting organisations are not dissimilar to the distinction of them in slavery between female house slaves and female field slaves. Their lot did not change and neither has their legacy.
Racism and other forms of discrimination must be brought to their knees. Athletes possess the power to do so.
