Professional Athletes Led the Way in Social Justice in 2020

PROFESSIONAL ATHLETES LED THE WAY IN SOCIAL JUSTICE IN 2020 BY CONNIE WARDMAN (SHE, HER, HERS)

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 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 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

By Erik Drost - https://www.flickr.com/photos/edrost88/39731134795/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/ index.php?curid=72882926 victims of violence during the U.S. Open by arriving for matches wearing face masks bearing the names of Floyd George, Breonna Taylor, Tamir Rice, Elijah McClain, Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery and Philando Castile. When Jacob Blake was shot in August by police, Osaka joined athletes from the NBA and elsewhere in protesting it, declaring that she wouldn’t play in her semifinal match of the U.S. Open. And following her lead, the tournament actually shut down for a day. Osaka has called both Kaepernick and LeBron James positive influences for her, giving her the strength in her own convictions to do what she knew in her heart was the right thing to do.

LEBRON JAMES – BASKETBALL, LOS ANGELES LAKERS

While LeBron James was named the Associated Press’ (AP) Male Athlete of the Year for a record-tying fourth time, his off-court efforts are still just as meaningful to him as his on-court plays. Saying that he wants to continue inspiring people with the way he plays basketball with the Los Angeles Lakers, James says there’s so much more he can do off the floor “to help cultivate people, inspire people, bring people together, empower them.”

James has been a strong supporter of Black Lives Matter. And as voter suppression raised its ugly head during the 2020 election campaign, he started the More Than A Vote organization and gathered more than 42,000 volunteers to work at polling stations for the November election. Additionally, he and other NBA players worked to help Florida felons regain their voting rights by providing money to pay fines, pushed for turnout among Black and young voters and helped get stadiums set up as voting places.

In an interview with the AP, James had this to say: “The tragic death of George Floyd, everyone getting a chance to see that, and also hearing the story of Breonna Taylor, her tragic story, and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia ... my people have had enough and I have had enough,” James said. “That’s why I called for action and with my platform, I believed I could get people to join me.”

Also long known for his continued work to improve the lives of residents in his beloved hometown of Akron, Ohio, James’ I PROMISE school, opened in 2018 with grades third through sixth now has over 450 students. And when the pandemic closed the school, he and his team made sure hot meals were delivered to students’ homes, including complete Thanksgiving meals. There’s now an affordable housing project for 50 families that broke ground this year and plans have been announced for House Three Thirty (Akron’s area code) that will offer family financial health programming and job training as well as a community gathering space. James continues to pay tribute to the people he works with, the people at his foundation and the sponsors that continue to support them and what they do and strive for.

Keith Allison, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION (WNBA)

On the league front, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) kicked ASS and took names! In June the WNBA and its players’ association, the WNBPA announced that they were dedicating their season to social justice with the formation of a new WNBA/WNBPA Social Justice Council. Led by players like Layshia Clarendon, Sydney Colson, Breanna Stewart, Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, A’ja Wilson and Satou Sabally among others, their impressive

agenda included plans to “educate, amplify and mobilize for action” to continue conversations “about race, voting rights, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and gun control amongst other important societal issues,” according to their press release.

It’s probably no secret why the WNBA has long been a leader in promoting social justice since according to the onlabor.org blog, the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reveals 83 percent of the WNBPA are persons of color; 67 percent are Black or African American; and while exact numbers aren’t known, “a substantial proportion of WNBPA player-members identify as LGBTQ+.” They and their family members have grown up facing discrimination. Given the current climate, the Social Justice Council decided to dedicate the 2020 season to Black Lives Matter and to Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed by police with a “Say Her Name” campaign.

Naming someone is a powerful thing! It gives one a sense of personal identity, a sense of dignity. But when a person is killed and their name is no longer seen in the papers or heard on television, they can be dismissed as just another Black person shot. Sometimes for family it’s only by keeping that name alive that an investigation stays open, that family members get answers and, hopefully, justice for their loved one. So maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise when a WNBA team owner objected to it all, a person considered to be one of the league’s most influential voices.

Enter co-owner of the Atlanta Dream, millionaire GOP donor Kelly Loeffler, then an appointed senator from the state of Georgia who was running for election for her seat. Having hitched her wagon to Donald Trump’s, she even ran a political ad depicting herself as being politically right of Genghis Khan. Now she publicly ridiculed the league’s pledge for increased social justice support in 2020 and was disdainful about their decision to place “Say Her Name” on jerseys. She even wrote a letter to the WNBA commissioner opposing Black Lives Matter in the strongest terms possible. Here is part of her letter with falsehoods about the movement:

However, I adamantly oppose the Black Lives Matter political movement, which has advocated for the defunding of police, called for the removal of Jesus from churches and the disruption of the nuclear family structure, harbored antiSemitic views, and promoted violence and destruction across the country.

But the women of the WNBA are smart! They’ve stood up against lots of bullies and realized what she was trying to do. In a phone conversation with Frank Bruni of the New York Times, veteran Seattle guard Sue Bird (fiancée of soccer star Megan Rapinoe) said she realized that Loeffler wanted to pick a fight with the league so she could get more attention for her campaign, bolstering her ultra-conservative views with conservative Georgia voters. “We had to find a better way,” Bird said.

So the WNBA did to Loeffler what white people have done to many Black people; they refused to name her – they took away her dignity by making her a non-entity. They then began league-wide video calls with advisers that included Michelle Obama and political organizer Stacey Abrams to begin vetting potential political opponents they might support. As we now know, they settled on Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, not only a Democrat but also a pastor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s church, the Atlanta Ebenezer Baptist Church.

Once they settled on Dr. Warnock, he addressed them by Zoom and, said Bird, all doubt was erased. “He stands for everything that we stand for. You could literally go down the line of all the things we care about, and we were aligned with him.” It was only days before everyone in the league started showing up for their nationally televised games with black T-shirts that now said, “Vote Warnock.” His campaign spokesperson said that within days following the start of the T-shirt endorsement, $236,000 flowed into their coffers.

It’s not a spoiler to say at this point that Dr. Warnock won AND the one who shall remain nameless lost. But this wasn’t just any protest. As one who specializes in race, sports and gender, Amira Rose Davis, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University called the WNBA’s campaign unprecedented. The tradition has been individual athletes supporting politicians. The difference here, she says is mass support due to the coordination, the strategy, the specificity of taking time to meet a candidate and then have the entire group back the candidate. Congratulations to the WNBA and WNBPA – you have opened a new chapter in the history of sports protests!

Thanks to all you athletes out there, recreational as well as professional who worked to make 2020 a year that made things better for humanity in whatever capacity you had. Bless your individual and collective hearts!