Redefining What It Means To Be An Athlete
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BY PATRICK SMITH (2020)
Almost a month after the NBA restarted, on Sunday August 25th, police officer Rusten Sheskey shot Jacob Blake, a Black man not breaking the law or causing any threat whatsoever, seven times in the back. In the days following, with national outrage growing over the shooting, the Bucks and Magic decided to strike and not play game 5 of their playoff series. Shortly after, the rest of the NBA followed, with the WNBA, MLB and MLS doing the same. An unprecedented act in American sports history.
In the following days, the players negotiated with the NBA to establish a social justice coalition and open up stadiums in every NBA market as polling sites for the 2020 general election. Not only did the players make their voices heard, but they got the league to step up and commit to making change as well, an unprecedented act in NBA history. After his next game, Jamal Murray struggled to summarize what drove him to lead his team and force a game 7 in their series with Utah, all while wearing shoes with portraits of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor drawn on them. He mustered, “We found something we’re fighting for as the NBA, as a collective unit…and I use these shoes as a symbol to keep fighting.”
It was clear that the NBA was no longer merely a source of entertainment. They’d joined the WNBA as a league that would fully acknowledge the humanity of their players, and stand shoulder to shoulder with them to fight for meaningful change in American society.
It’s clear that it’s time to retire the old definition of athlete, or rather, expose this invisible definition for what it really is: discrimination against race, sex, ability, you name it. What does being an athlete mean in 2020? It means being a human being, filled with emotions, fears, dreams and hopes that plays a sport for a living. It means being a human being that experiences racism, sexism, discrimination, police brutality, and much more. It means being able to proudly call yourself Black, without being shunned or silenced by the media and fans. Athletes do not switch off their human consciousness when they go to work. The Black men and women who play in all of the top professional sports leagues in America do not experience the events of Aug 25th and simply “go back to work.” They understand that the Black people who are not confined to the basketball bubble might not make it to work the next day because of the racism here in America.
To think that a professional athlete will have the answers to problems that politicians have actively avoided or drowned out for centuries is naïve. These men and women may not be any more informed than we the average fans, and yet they are still compelled to speak up and lead by example. As many have noted, it is not Black people’s problem to solve racism. To place that burden on those who face the violence and discrimination is only perpetuating the problem.
ESPN’s Maria Taylor perfectly captured this point on FirstTake saying, “The Black players in those locker rooms, that are in the Disney bubble right now, should not be held accountable or responsible for changing the problem that they did not create, because they are not racist, they didn’t create racism, they didn’t build it. All they are saying is: ‘We deserve better. We demand better.’ And it should be expected of everyone in this country to do the same.”
To her point, as the news broke that strikes were imminent on Aug 25th, many asked what would they accomplish and what the players plans or demands were. These questions imply that athletes are considered to be on the same plane as activists, and yet the current definition for athletes does not mention anything about activism. To hold athletes to those standards is to gloss over what they’re protesting. Just as politicians and sports writers debated how Colin Kaepernick protested, instead of what he protested about, expecting the NBA and WNBA players to have all the answers is to miss the point entirely. And so it is crucial to better define the athlete, as a living, breathing person that doesn’t have all the answers, but knows right from wrong, and knows what real justice looks like. And yes, they’re proficient at a sport too.
