Not that the masses needed further confirmation that Donald Trump supports white supremacist ideology, but his response to the riots in Charlottesville, Va. last weekend as showed that he is only the president of the racists, extremists and misguided flocks who elected him. We have reached a seminal moment in the fractured history of this country, a period when professional athletes of all ethnicities should use their expansive platform to resist Trump’s divisive and dangerous attempt at cultural engineering and hegemony.
Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began a movement that fostered increased attention to the unjustified killings of Black men by police officers and other social issues. By simply sitting, then subsequently kneeling, during the customary playing of the “Star Bangled Banner” before the start of NFL games, he peacefully carried out what many duplicitously viewed as an affront to an American norm.
The blowback has been Kaepernick, who remains an unsigned free-agent, being blackballed by NFL owners. But his actions took hold and other athletes have similarly continued to display their opposition to the virulent conditions permeating this country with the blessings and support of Trump.
His reprehensible defense of the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, which resulted in dozens of counter-protesters being injured and a 32-year-old, Heather Heyer murdered by 20-year-old domestic terrorist James Allen Fields Jr., merits and necessitates outward shows of condemnation by professional athletes.
“Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said at a news conference at Trump Tower in Manhattan Tuesday, referencing the Confederate Army general who for well over a century has been upheld as a symbol of slavery. Trump also blamed people he characterized as the “alt-left” for “swinging clubs” as they “came charging at … the alt-right”
“Do they have any problems?” he dishonestly asked. “I think they do.”
He continued, “So this week, it is Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
Athletes have historically stood up against abhorrent social and racial injustices in America and abroad. Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and others were fearless in conducting and promoting civil disobedience. The Seattle Seahawks’ defensive lineman Michael Bennett is following their lineage. The 31-year-old Bennett has maintained he will not stand for the national anthem for the entirety of this NFL season to bring attention to many of America’s social ills.
“With everything that’s been going on the last couple of months, and especially after the last couple of days seeing everything in Virginia, seeing what’s going on out there … I just want to be able to use my platform to be able to continuously speak on it and address it,” he said earlier this week.
“I don’t love segregation,” Bennett expounded. “I don’t love riots. I don’t love oppression. I don’t love gender slander. I just want to see people have the equality they deserve.”
Rational people would contend those are some of the words Trump should have used to contextualize what took place in Charlottesville.
Instead, he has enabled the further intolerance and violence by white supremacists, and sent them a clear message that they have a friend and supporter in the so-called leader of the free world.