Black Lives and Basketball: The Harm in keeping politics out of sports
By: Arslay Joseph
Tags: NBA, Sports, Basketball, Politics, BlackLivesMatter

NBA players taking a knee in solidarity with Black Lives Matter protesters. Creator: Mike Ehrmann/GETTY

Jacob Blake’s death has riled up protests against police brutality and systemic racism throughout the country. But in the sports world, everyone expected business as usual. Media pundits would make a statement, and sports would roll on, unhindered by the outside world.

Yet on August 27, something unprecedented occurred. Led by George Hill and Sterling Brown, the Milwaukee Bucks decided things would not go on as usual. Instead of going out to play the Orlando Magic, these players refused to step out onto the court. Soon afterwards, other teams followed their lead. A day of playoff basketball turned into a full-fledged strike, led by fed up Black athletes.

To many Americans, sports represents an escape: entertainment with its own rules and regulations, separate from the complicated outside world. It is a space where the divisions of real life are replaced by the fabricated conflict between the Lakers and Clippers. But in trying to “keep politics out of sports”, people silences the very people who make sports possible: the players.

81.1% of NBA players and 70% of NFL players are Black. But when watching these leagues, no one thinks about police brutality, or why so many Black kids feel like playing ball is their only way to be successful in the United States.

In order for it all to work, the athlete can only refract the values of the status quo and the league; for the Black athlete, this more often than not means silence. The sports world reduces athletes to pawns and units of labor; to be marketable, players have to divorce themselves from their own communities. If you deviate from the mold, the punishment can be steep.

Some of the most beloved public figures in the United States are Black athletes. But that “love” is often conditional: look no further than Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee for the first time four years ago; or Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, an NBA player who lost his career for protesting the National Anthem. Muhammad Ali risked exile from boxing and prison time for refusing to fight in Vietnam for a country that oppresses Black people. All were punished severely, by fans and institutions alike, for highlighting the marginalization that Black people face.

Suppressing the voices of Black athletes to serves to preserve the status quo. In a country where the phrase “Black lives matter” is controversial, and Black death is routine, then “keeping politics out of sports” is a political act itself.

White America wants to enjoy the talents of Black athletes while defunding Black communities, criminalizing Black bodies, and devaluing Black life. Player protests removes the curtain, and forces fans to take a hard look at racial injustice. Despite what many believe, sports are not immune from the dynamics of race and inequality present in the country at large; if anything, it is intimately intertwined.

Without Black athletes, the world of American sports comes crumbling down.

Sports are a 500 billion dollar industry; the NBA itself is worth $8 billion dollars. Team owners represent some of the most powerful people in America: billionaires who’ve made their wealth in a plethora of different industries. Imagine if that power and political capital was used to address the issues of the players, or enrich the community they profit so much from.

These players have put the ball in America’s court: if you don’t respect our lives, then you can’t consume our labor. In the words of Lakers guard JR Smith: “If you don’t hear us, you can’t see us.” The NBA strike places pressure not only at the team owners, media executives, and the league, but also the consumer.

The next steps are still unclear. LeBron has voiced the desire for team owners to take more ownership of the issue of racial injustice. Maybe this is a segway into something bigger. Whatever the next steps are, these boycotts put the focus back where it belongs: racism and state sanctioned violence.

Yet when athletes stand up, like the NBA players just did, it sends shock waves through the establishment. In particular, player strikes, very rare occurrences, puts immense pressures on institutions. Look no further than the football players strike at the University of Missouri in 2015. Black students at the University of Missouri protested for months for the removal of Tim Wolfe as president. Yet once African-American football players went on strike, Wolfe stepped down within a week.

Black athletes and Black people are more powerful than we’re conditioned to believe. We’re told to be happy with shallow concessions and a corporate co-opt of #Blacklivesmatter, in the name of “progress”. The truth is the United States could not exist without the labor, contributions, and existence of Black people. Imagine the US without African-Americans, and their contributions to music, food, politics, civil rights and social justice. Without essential workers, who are disproportionately of color, this country would have collapsed in quarantine.