PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES
LED THE WAY IN SOCIAL JUSTICE IN 2020 BY CONNIE WARDMAN (SHE, HER, HERS)
athlete activism in 2020 it’s tough to narrow it down. But I’ve chosen two individuals and one league to highlight the impact athletes made this past year. My apologies in advance to the many other athletes, teams and leagues who accomplished powerful and impressive things!
Carine06 from UK, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Professional athlete activism not only came into its own in 2020, it turned a new page in the history of sports protests. While some of our social and civil unrest can be attributed to the pandemic that now has caused over 400,000 deaths in the U.S. since it began last year, it really has its roots in institutional racism. This is an inconvenient, even painful truth that hopefully we can address in some truly heart-based, respectful dialogue in 2021! But back to 2020 and the fact that because professional athletes have plenty of public exposure and large followings, they have a powerful platform to pursue social, racial and economic justice like never before. One of the big reasons for that is Colin Kaepernick’s willingness to take a knee and become, as I called him in our November-December 2020 issue, “A Catalyst for Social Change.” There are a couple of other factors at play here: certainly we all continue to evolve as individuals and as a society; the other is the unanticipated growing power of social media. While Kaepernick is certainly not the first athlete to stand up for what’s right, it’s social media that’s also moved things forward in a way never before imagined until recently. His kneeling during the national anthem in 2016, while meant to be a respectful protest of police brutality and racial oppression and injustice, created a huge national controversy on social media. Not long before the star NFL San Francisco 49ers quarterback ruined his playing career by kneeling, he would have been “officially” fired. Instead he’s continued to exist in a strange netherworld where he’s still a free agent but hasn’t been placed with a team by the NFL since 2016. Thanks to real-time viral videos of police brutality, racial oppression and injustice and the powerful conversations they’ve initiated with the public, athletes are no longer under the tight control of team owners and big brands always looking to take the consumers’ temperature. Instead of being censured for speaking out against these problems, athletes are now being praised for it. There have been so many inspiring examples of
14 COMPETE january-february 2021
NAOMI OSAKA – TENNIS One of the best examples of a new activist is 23-yearold tennis star Naomi Osaka, winner of her third Grand Slam title and selected as the 2020 Female Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press. World Tennis Association (WTA) Chairman and CEO Steve Simon praised not only her playing ability but also her activism, showing how “athletes have an opportunity to use their platform for something bigger than the game or themselves.” It was during the pandemic-curtailed tennis tours that Osaka first had time to watch and read the news and see the suffering caused by the pandemic and also by the racial injustice going on. As a result she highlighted Black
