"It has to stop. Enough. Enough is enough."
July 13, 2016 6:46 PM   Subscribe

"Generations ago, legends like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown, Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe and countless others, they set a model for what athletes should stand for. So we choose to follow in their footsteps." In the wake of the violence this week in St. Paul, Dallas, and Baton Rouge, a quartet of NBA stars (Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, and LeBron James) open the 2016 ESPYS with a call to action. (SLESPN)
posted by zebra (14 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
Here's hoping the police don't walk out of this one.
posted by Sphinx at 7:06 PM on July 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


Wonderful, unflinching speech.

I do wish they had said Sandra Bland's name, considering she died a year ago today, and that black women often go unacknowledged in this discussion. So I'll #sayhername again: Sandra Bland, we remember you today and every day.
posted by sallybrown at 7:16 PM on July 13, 2016 [50 favorites]


This is important. Sports, for whether you give a shit about it or not, has a huge influence on our society and culture. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods were spectacularly dominant in their time, but also pointedly apolitical. It's important that these people with disproportionate influence have chosen to take a public stand for a better future. Without criticism, kudos to them.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:01 PM on July 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


Too bad Ali wasn't there to see it.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 10:37 PM on July 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Thanks for this post
posted by chapps at 12:25 AM on July 14, 2016


This feels so profound. It almost feels archetypal. These huge superstars taking a united stand. It feels really right and really good. I can't really explain it well but it gives me a sense of relief. There's so much rightness to it.
posted by gt2 at 5:36 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


Thanks for this. I'm glad today's athletes are taking the kind of brave stand that Muhammad Ali, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, and others did back in my day. I hope it does some good.
posted by languagehat at 8:19 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


I was interested that they distanced themselves from the idea of a "role model" and pushed instead working for social justice.

This may seem innocuous, but I think it is a brilliant and pointed shift in identifying who is responsible for violence against black men.
posted by chapps at 8:49 AM on July 14, 2016 [7 favorites]


Its worth noting (though Sphinx alluded to it) that this previous week, the Minnesota Lynx and the New York Liberty stood up about this as well.
posted by anthropophagous at 8:56 AM on July 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


It is excellent to see these positive messages and calls to action.

However, as a resident of Saint Paul I need to correct the record: The horrid slaughter of Philandro Castile did not occur in Saint Paul and was not perpetrated by the SPPD. It happened in the tiny suburb of Falcon Heights and was committed by a cop from the equally tiny suburb of Saint Anthony.
I know it's like the 30th thing wrong with this situation but it's really unfair to my city and its large, professional, progressive Police Department that people seem to be defaulting to associating that clusterfuck of a traffic stop and its God-awful consequences with us.
If you need to pick a close, well-known city to use as a reference, please use Minneapolis - that department already has a bad reputation for community relations.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 9:32 AM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


BigLankyBastard: I understand the urge to correct the record, but given the history of police violence in this nation, it's a bit disingenuous to act like this couldn't have easily happened in ANY city. Yes, even your city.
posted by zebra at 8:53 PM on July 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


What's disingenuous is to act like it doesn't matter where it happened. The Castile shooting DIDN'T happen in Saint Paul, please stop saying it did.
Some departments, like SPPD and, for instance, Dallas, have an excellent reputation for well-trained, community-oriented, police. Police that are well-trained with an emphasis on de-escalation and being familiar with the citizenry are less likely to commit that sort of tragic deadly blunder than police from less professional departments, or from departments with a culture of hostility and racism towards their communities.
Throwing up your hands and saying "It could happen ANYWHERE!" is tantamount to denying that there is any way to address and prevent inappropriate use-of-force, or to reduce the incidence of race-based profiling. Some police agencies are actively working - successfully - to more justly and safely serve their communities. To ignore this is to harm the movement for better policing.
Technically, yeah, it could happen anywhere. But it didn't. It happened to the Saint Anthony police department, with its 27 officers, it's 50% African-american arrest rate in a 5% black community, its emphasis on traffic tickets as a revenue source, and its history of having been warned they're doing their traffic stops dangerously wrong.
posted by BigLankyBastard at 5:09 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


> BigLankyBastard: I understand the urge to correct the record, but given the history of police violence in this nation, it's a bit disingenuous to act like this couldn't have easily happened in ANY city. Yes, even your city.

I understand the urge to stay on message—COPS BAD—but you seem to be going down the road of "facts don't matter, only the Big Message matters," and that's exactly the kind of thing that gives activists and activism a bad name.
posted by languagehat at 8:19 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]




« Older Bulldogs on skateboards   |   Just don't take Bill Hader's date movie advice Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments