Tyler Tynes is a staff writer for the liberal blog SB Nation whose beat is sticking to the intersection of race, politics and sports. In other words, his livelihood depends on race hustling. Along with a few like-minded friends, Tynes just marched from Charlottesville to D.C. to "combat forms of white supremacy, inflamed by the presidency, which they see a resurgence of in this country."
When your job is just sticking to race, politics and sports, there's no such thing as alleged racism and white supremacy. The debate ended before it began. Departing on the 118-mile trek, which at times attracted more police officers providing security than protesters, Tynes wrote:
Like many protests, today is about disruption. The point is to march through counties like this, reminding white voters and consumers the country is in turmoil, white supremacy is real, and the events in Charlottesville weren’t a one-off.
Organizers say this march is the perfect environment to discuss how white supremacy manifests in different spaces, including sports. If they have plans to fight white supremacy, it’s naive to think systems of athletics aren’t complicit in it and benefit from it. Equally, it’s ingenuous to ignore how sports are shaping these conversations.
Yes, this is about DACA and the Dreamers, taking down Confederate idolatry, combating 45 and the goons wearing his red hats, but it’s also about a movement bubbling for a year to make a typically conservative sports fanbase care about progressive issues.
Tynes' livelihood is about whipping people up into anger and victim-hood. He writes that his fellow travelers' march "is the byproduct of the decade: the result of unjust policies and police brutality, the things sparking the current sports unrest. Backlash against national anthem protests, Kaepernick’s drop from star quarterback to football exile, and Michael Bennett’s harassment by police; all these only add fuel to their fire.
Upon further review, Bennett ran from police in Las Vegas last month and his charges of harassment haven't been substantiated. But it makes for a good story, if not job security for a race hustler. Without this race-hustling gig, Tynes is a desk jockey stuck inside four walls, not free to peddle race and animosity toward whites and police officers. Or to assume all charged with racism are guilty.
Charlottesville, the point of departure, is, to Tynes, "where white Americans marched and someone was killed in the name of a white ethno-state." He and his fellow race hustlers say all people of color need to come together to battle the white ethno-state no matter what your ideology or the venue is, whether it's football or the state of Virginia.
Jamal Johnson, the rally’s pace-keeper, is quoted that you never let any opportunity to pedal race go to waste, "on and off the football field, whenever the opportunity presents itself."
Since the disgruntled marchers brought up football, it's only fitting to use a grid-iron analogy for their false charges of white supremacy. They deserve to be whistled for unsportsmanlike conduct, if not for "targeting."
