A progressive writer whose been pushing for the collision of sports and politics for nearly a decade says President Trump focuses on black athletes as high-profile symbols of “people to hate,” and his right-wing echo chamber follows his lead.
In his commentary on sports in 2017, The Nation's sports editor Dave Zirin writes, "Following an old script, right-wing racist minions spent this year trying to make athlete activists pay a price for being conscious."
It doesn't appear to be much of a price at all, though, as athletes freely kneel and sit during the playing of the national anthem at professional sporting events. Without repercussion.
Well-meaning citizens rightly think anti-police protests are best aimed at city hall and kept off the football field. And proceeds from season tickets should not be used to fund controversial social justice agendas. They are under no obligation to support what Zirin calls "being conscious."
As far left as they come, Zirin believes just the opposite -- that the sports world should firmly become a public square of political dissent. Through his writing, he's given voice to dissenters like John Carlos, who disgraced America with a power salute on the podium at the 1968 Olympics, and to the Seahawks' Michael Bennett in a yet to be released book on whites and racism.
To Zirin's delight, Colin Kaepernick's defiance last year brought political dissent to the place where Americans go to be entertained, not indoctrinated. This was when a "wildfire intensified as athletes started to leverage their platforms to speak about those losing their lives at the hands of police." It led to "a different kind of rhyming" this year -- the season of the backlash (see Oakland Athletics catcher Bruce Maxwell kneeling in photo above):
Open, ugly racism aimed at athletes who recognize that, in historical moments such as this one, they needed to do more than just shut up and play.
It saw how black athletes—and white supporters of those athletes—are, as in the past, threatened, policed, slandered, and attacked for daring to use their platforms to say something about the world. Donald Trump, Fox News, and their neo-Nazi-infused right-wing echo chamber has spent a year frothing with rabid barbarism in order to shut these athletes down.
Though post-Civil War Democrats invented the KKK abomination, Zirin says it's Republicans who are racist by their nature. "Trump and his dwindling, aging army go after black athletes for the same reason they defended Confederate monuments and supported Roy Moore: because it’s in their blood. But their motivations are more obvious than just instinctual racism or playing to a base. Athletes have been the hub of anti-racist discussion over the last year. That threatens Trump’s 'racial' agenda of division and suppression. It is also drawn from a very old playbook."
If we work hard enough, though, "there is something better for everyone," Zirin says. Like the slaughter of preborn children by Planned Parenthood, which drew support this year from the Seattle Storm women's pro basketball team that Zirin greatly admires. Something "better," too, like the voice of dissent from athletes who are misguided about when and where to unload their grievances.
Then the writer with a warped sense of morality delivered the charge for his disgruntled band of brothers and sisters for the future:
This is the most important lesson out of 2017 for activist athletes from high school to the pros: the platform is there, and these struggles need to be linked in order to survive the backlashes to come. The fact that these actions are upsetting all the right people only proves the importance of the message. I don’t have the slightest idea what 2018 will bring: only that the blaze that these athlete activists maintained in 2017 will be felt for decades. It’s now a subterranean fire. They cannot put it out.
The "minions" so despised by Zirin may not be able to douse that "fire." But we can -- and we do -- tune it out of our living rooms. We have choices on how to spend our leisure time and where to spend our entertainment dollar. If SJW athletes encouraged by SJW media want to kill the golden goose that is their livelihood that's a choice they can make, but it will only hurt them.
