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LLUSTRATION BY SAVANNAH DONALD/STAFF ILLUSTRATOR
Kameryn Thigpen
Opinion Columnist
[email protected]
When athletes take a stand, the whole world sees them. The brave act is forged inside our memories as it comes across our TV screens. Although there is a new wave of activism within sports, the aura of protest has always been there.
October 16 will mark the 50th anniversary of the famous Black Power salute at the Summer Olympics. Demonstrated by Tommie Smith and John Carlos, it sent a powerful message that athletes can be activists as well. Athletes have a right to protest because the issues that affect us affect them too. They are not immune to oppression by any means. Being an athlete gives them an opportunity to entertain their fans by participating in their sport of choice, but they shouldn’t be confined to that, they are Americans too.
In a country that was built on the ability and privilege, there should not be any restrictions on an athlete. This idea is not just coming to the forefront as athletes have been protesting for decades. From Jesse Owens and Muhammad Ali to LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick. All of this occurred to me when the Fox News host Laura Ingraham criticized LeBron James for speaking out against Trump, she responded with telling him to keep his political views to himself and “shut up and dribble.” Why shouldn’t athletes speak on politics if they are too Americans?
One might say that it is not their place but if your president has his hand and his Twitter in every facet of American life, then yeah you have a right. One might say that it is not an athlete’s place to be an activist, but if your president can tweet his every impulse of thought, why can’t a football player kneel occasionally?
In protesting, one is putting everything on the line for this right. When Ali refused to go to Vietnam in 1967, he was arrested and stripped of his boxing titles and banned from boxing for three years. His words of protest included the fire and controversy Ali was known for as he said in a BBC interview in 1966, “They never called me n***. They never lynched me. They didn’t put no dogs on me. They didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”
Ali was way ahead of his time, not only defying the American status quo, but demanding that America to look at itself in the mirror regarding its lack of humanity towards people of color. To the athletes that do not protest, I believe if you have a platform to speak out on you should use it. It’s crucial especially in these times.
I want to have faith in this but every athlete is not that brave or an activist. Some are just there to play their sports but that’s how these agencies want them to be. They want them to be silent because they know what could happen if these powerful figures decided to turn against them and defiantly protest. Honestly, the ones that are not protesting are giving more power to these people and halting their resistance because sports would not be entertainment anymore and politics would be even more in our faces.
The other side of this is the threat of the ones that do protest. After Kaepernick’s protest in 2016, the NFL provided repercussions, or better yet, firing the protesters. Not only are they silencing these athletes by taking away their livelihood they are making a choice for them like a master to his slave, a slave for entertainment. No matter how much these big agencies try to silence athletes, they have a chance to really change things in our nation but the agencies want to keep them under their control and every arena is a plantation. Despite all of this, there are some brave ones out there and as we put our faith in them, others will follow in their footsteps, as they have done for decades.
