Storyline: Some people argue that athletes should “just stick to sports.” Others believe that more athletes need to speak up when they see injustices. WNBA players followed the latter advice. They suffered consequences because of it.
Stand for something or you’ll fall for anything. But standing for something often comes at a cost. Just ask WNBA players.
July 6: Philando Castile, an innocent African-American, was shot and killed by an officer during a traffic stop in a suburb of St. Paul.
July 7: A gunman opened fire on police in Dallas during a “Black Lives Matter” protest, killing five officers and wounding six other people.
Courtesy: longroom.com
July 12: Four off-duty Minneapolis police officers working security at a WNBA game at the Target Center quit their jobs. They acted in response to four Lynx players who held a press conference denouncing violence committed by and against police.
The entire Lynx team had worn warmup shirts referencing the victims of the week’s terrible violence. The front of the shirts read: Change starts with Us. Justice & Accountability. The names of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile—men killed by police—were written on the back of the t-shirts. The back also displayed the Dallas Police Department emblem and the phrase, Black Lives Matter.
July 20: The WNBA fined the Liberty, Mercury and Fever teams $5,000 and players $500 apiece for wearing black warm-up shirts. Keep in mind, these were plain, black Adidas warm ups!
The action taken by the WNBA seems contradictory. Consider this. Just a few weeks earlier, on June 12, the Phoenix Mercury’s Kelsey Bone tweeted that the WNBA immediately sent shirts for the athletes to wear to show support when an American-born man gunned down 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando in a hate crime. And note: In 2014 the NBA didn’t fine teams or players for protesting police brutality on t-shirts.
Is it a double standard? Yes, but the root of this issue goes so much deeper.
Courtesy: praisecleveland.hellobeautiful.com
NY Liberty guard and WNBA Players Association VP, Tanisha Wright, interprets it this way. There’s “still an issue in America and we want to be able to use our platforms, use our voices. We don’t want to let anyone silence us in what we want to talk about. It’s unfortunate that the WNBA has fined us and has not supported its players.”
That’s exactly what should have been done because the WNBA supports unity and equity. Bone went on to say that she thought it was “sick that we are being punished for supporting a matter that affects majority of us, personally…. Why support one cause that affects our country and not another?”
Briann January, a player for the Indiana Fever, was upset because “this league that is 90—if not above 90 percent African American—and you have an issue that is directly affecting them and the people they know, and you have a league that isn’t willing to side with them.”
But when athletes unite on their shared platform to use their voice, they get fined. ‘Land of the free,’ right? Please!
It wasn’t solely a race issue for the WNBA athletes. It wasn’t an anti-police stand, either. It was to promote peace in America.
Courtesy: plus.google.com
People were upset, as assuredly the cops were as well, because the Lynx t-shirts included the names of two black men shot and killed by police but excluded the names of the five police officers who were killed in Dallas. The Dallas Police logo was displayed instead.
I agree that, yes, if you’re going to talk about all seven people killed, then don’t single out two and group together the other five.
I personally can’t grasp the reason why police officers walked out of the Target Center that day. They were at an event where players were speaking out against violence in general. The players addressed both sides, neither attacking nor favoring on3 side or the other. If the shirts had read, “All Lives Matter,” would the cops still have walked out?
The prevailing attitude of “You’re either with us or against us” is why the Black Lives Matter movement continues asking for acknowledgment. A lot of people have trouble realizing that the implicit understanding of the movement’s title is “Black Lives Matter (Too),” not that ONLY black lives matter.
I don’t know why the only the police symbol was displayed on the t-shirt. But I do know this: there’s no doubt that the man who shot the police in Dallas would have had to face the full weight of the justice system. And I do know there’s a ton of doubt whether policemen who killed Philando Castile and Alton Sterling, respectively, will ever suffer criminal consequences.
It would be one thing if the WNBA had a policy that the league applied uniformly to each of these two cases. But how can the WNBA rule one way, then another way?
Courtesy: ABC15.com
Some people argue that athletes should “just stick to sports.” But as Minnesota Lynx forward, Maya Moore, told reporters: “We as a nation can decide to stand up for what is right, no matter your race, background, or social status. It’s time that we take a deep look at our ability to be compassionate and empathetic to those suffering from the problems that are deep within our society. Again, this is a human issue, and we need to speak out for change together.”
Amen!
