By Nick Forbes Asst. sports editor
As the world seems to be falling to pieces right before our eyes, people are becoming divided. Political issues, race issues and social issues seem to be arising at an alarming rate and everyone is quick to give their opinion.
Among the throngs of people spouting their opinions and solutions to audiences that may or may not be listening, there are the voices that we all inevitably end up hearing.
They are the voices of professional athletes. In the wake of San Fransicsco 49er’s quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s ongoing protest during the National Anthem, every word, sentence and idea uttered by an athlete that doesn’t relate to sports has been thrown under a microscope.
And with the growing number of athletes who have taken stands on a plethora of issues, a troublesome, somewhat ridiculous question has been posed: “Should professional athletes speak out on social issues?”
Now, the fact that this question is even being posed in the first place is ridiculous to me. The fact that this question is now being debated by top news outlets such as ESPN, MSNBC and Huffington Post is a whole other story.
Have we somehow forgotten that these athletes are human beings? I mean, it’s easy to overlook their mortality because of the superhuman feats they perform on a regular basis in their respective sports, but these are human beings. Does one’s status in our society really put a higher or lower value on their opinion?
Athletes have always taken stands on issues close to them, but lately the backlash is what has been getting the most attention.
The hot button topic at the moment is the unarmed killings of black Americans by law enforcement and the actions of the Black Lives Matter campaign. There has been no shortage of protest from professional athletes.
Most recently is obviously Kaepernick’s display of sitting or kneeling for the playing of the national anthem. Kaepernick stated to NFL.com, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
As you can imagine, the protest has drawn a tremendous amount of support, but it mostly has generated an incredible amount of backlash.
Kaepernick has received death threats and threats to his family simply for standing up for a cause that he believes in. One statement I heard was that Kaepernick had no right to protest the morality of this nation while he sits back and collects multi-million dollar paychecks for playing football.
Really? These are issues that are directly affecting Kaepernick, as well as many other athlete’s lives and their families lives. And I have a feeling that the people who have such strong words for Kaepernick are so out of touch with the actual issues that it’s hard for me to contemplate the actual weight of their words.
One thing that can’t be denied is the effect that these sports figues have. In the weeks following Kaepernick’s first protest, America has talked more about police brutality and black lives than it ever has before. Whether or not reform is being made is one thing, but the conversation has been opened and the topic is not as taboo as it used to be.
And this isn’t the first time we’ve seen change thanks to sports. In 2015, University of Missouri President Timothy Wolfe found himself under fire for the school’s poor handling of racial tensions. For weeks students protested and called for Wolfe’s resignation without any sign of progress. Then, dozens of black members of the University’s football team said that they would not play unless the president resigned. It took Wolfe one day to resign after that.
The power and platform that professional athletes have is huge and undeniable, but people who oppose the views of these athletes only focus on the athlete’s stature, not their message.
People are reluctant to listen to someone whom they feel is only good for one thing—playing sports. Or maybe people feel as if athletes have it too good to complain. Either way, it has to stop.
Stop seeing athletes as simply athletes. Stop seeing athletes’ words as just words from a celebrity, but rather as a message from a concerned citizen of the United States. Who are we to decide the importance of the opinions of others?
Sports shots for The Quill reflect the views of individual members of the editorial board. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the entire editorial board or of the university. The content of the sports pages is the responsibility of the editor in chief and the sports editor.
