If social justice warrior athletes follow the advice of David Steele, their activism in sports venues will be an "endless fight." A writer for The Sporting News who previously co-authored a biography on 1968 Olympic protester Tommie Smith, Steele posted a 7,000-word broadside on the people who oppose political activism in sports and on the athletes who refuse to go political in their platforms. He also tries to justify the actions of protesters like Colin Kaepernick, who carries the "DNA" of former African-American athletes Jack Johnson, John Carlos, Muhammad Ali and others.
Steele says of protesters, they "are real, live, flesh-and-blood humans, people who cannot and will not compartmentalize their identities as entertainers from their interactions with the injustices they know and feel."
Reviewing a long history of African-American athletes who stood up against prejudice, Steele cites Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion who was jailed on a bogus charge. There was also “Rose” Robinson, a high jumper on the U.S. team in the 1959 Pan-American Games who refused to stand for the national anthem. There were also Ali, stripped of his boxing title for refusing to fight the white man's war in Vietnam, and Smith and John Carlos, who shocked the world with their black power salute on the victory stand at the '68 Olympics. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar boycotted those Games.
Steele writes that sports were a perfect stand-in for American society overall and "the very idea that athletes were to stay in their lanes and never even glance outside of them, much less steer away from them, has never lost its power."
Fast forwarding to today, Steele confirms, "We’re having a moment in sports right now" and "people are deciding who they love and hate, support and shun based on whether those athletes are willing to remind the world of their humanity."
The bad guys are the ones who stand apart from the social justice movement. Most notable are football legend Jim Brown and Tiger Woods, golfing pal of The Donald. "When it was time to kneel, they stood where they were told," Steele said in bashing them.
Then there's Kaepernick, whose name is "literally treated as a profanity." Steele thinks that outside of a handful of MVPs and Super Bowl champs, Kaepernick’s name will live longer than that of any quarterback of his era. Doing his very best "Bob Costas," Steele says that Ali, Johnson, Smith, Carlos and others "are embedded in Kaepernick’s DNA."
LeBron James is another leading SJW in sports, and next month he'll appear in the Showtime series "Shut Up and Dribble." NFL player Michael Bennett, who was "assaulted" by Las Vegas police last year, makes Steele's list, too. Kaepernick and several WNBA players support Black Lives Matter. Some retired athletes also get it. Former NBA great Bill Russell appeared on social media taking a knee. During his football Hall of Fame induction, Randy Moss wore a tie bearing the names of the victims of police brutality.
These and many other SJW's are Steele's heroes. They're suffering indignities at the hands of fans who detest their protests. These are the people using phrases like: "All Lives Matter,” “disrespecting the troops,” “what about Chicago” or this is “not the time or place to protest.” These slumbering bigots want to use woke athletes for their "escape" at sports events.
Steele says sports fans fit into one of two categories: 1) "Either you believe athletes are living, breathing, hurting, angry, frustrated activists using the leverage American society has granted them and shouting from the platform they’ve earned", or 2) "they only exist to give you a thrill for a few hours a night, or week, and had better get back in their boxes and shut their faces until it’s showtime again." He says these choices have confronted people in every era of sports.
