We Matter

by Etan Thomas

  Etan: That’s also a good point. Let me ask you this: do you think that sometimes there’s a certain romanticizing of the sixties? Most of the athletes were not like Ali and Bill Russell and Kareem.

  Dyson: (Laughing) Oh, there’s no doubt about that. I write about this, especially in my book Race Rules, where I discuss this very topic. There’s not only a romanticization of athletes from the civil rights era, but all the leaders and Black figures from the civil rights era. Most Black people were not involved in the civil rights movement. Most athletes were not actively engaged. There’s always a small remnant, a redemptive remnant, of people who change the stakes of the conversation and the parameters of progress for all of us . . . So we end up looking back through the haze of nostalgia that creates a false impression, that most of the time in the sixties they were involved in protests, movements, and marches. The March on Washington was an aberration in the sense of that great a gathering, that big of a commitment expressed by people across the board. Most of these marches were much smaller, and most of the time they weren’t marching but strategizing, thinking, critically engaging their communities. Trying to encourage conversation, change, and protests.

  So, yeah, there’s a huge nostalgia piece about this . . . Let’s be honest, there was a greater likelihood, when you have limited opportunities and when segregation prevailed, for Black athletes to protest social barriers, because they were denied. And the denial to those Black athletes of things that they knew they should’ve had access to was a metaphor for how other Black people were being denied. Lawyers, doctors, painters, engineers. So, athletes and entertainers were the front line of social protest in the forties, fifties, and sixties because they had opportunities that most other people didn’t have. And as a result of that, they bore a burden . . .

  Now, a lot of people did what they could. They couldn’t take off their jobs, they couldn’t afford to—they were poor so they did what they could. They cooked food for the movement. They were sacrificial. So I’m not dissing them, but I am saying that, through the haze of nostalgia, we pretend that every athlete over fifty was profoundly involved in the social movement . . . We didn’t know what they were doing and some of them were outright like O.J. Simpson, saying, “I ain’t no Negro and what are you talking about? And I’ve got it made and I don’t want to be involved in that racial protest myth.”

  Etan: Exactly.

  Dyson: So it is unfair, and I think illegitimate, to demand that of young athletes—these kids are basically trying to find out who they are. Exploring their opportunities in a culture that often didn’t support them, just like with hip-hop in the eighties. You know, think about hip-hop’s emergence in the seventies and eighties . . . “Look, y’all are ridiculous. I don’t even want to support y’all.” Now that they’ve become famous, they’re rich, all of a sudden you want them to support your community and to be outspoken. You haven’t engaged them. You haven’t trained them. You haven’t loved them. Allen Iverson was demonized by a great deal of people in American culture and some in Black communities. “You’re wrong, you got the wrong dress, you got the wrong tattoos,” and so on. Now everybody’s got a tattoo . . . So things change. They transform. We get nostalgic and romantic and we deny that each generation has to find its voice, its outlook, its way, its means of expression.

  Etan: So, not a “lost generation.”

  Dyson: Definitely not. There’s probably as many athletes today who are involved in social protest and social conscience as there were earlier, but there were fewer athletes in the fifties and sixties than there are now. But the progress of those men and women has indeed made possible the expansion of opportunity for some of these younger people. And therefore, there is an expectation that they would engage in socially redemptive kinds of practices. But let’s be honest, it’s always against the grain. It was against the grain in the sixties and seventies and it’s against the grain now.

  Etan: A lot of young people took a knee. Does seeing these young people engaged the way they are give you a bright hope for the future?

  Dyson: It’s absolutely tremendous. In one sense, they’re learning from their elders, social media, greater exposure on cable channels. Think about it: in the forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies, television is in its infancy, then it comes into its own. We ain’t got no cable TV. When Ali is doing what he’s doing, the eyes of the world are on him because there were fewer options . . .

  Now it’s even more remarkable that these young people do what they do, because there’s a proliferation of options. There are options galore. How many channels you got on cable now? Six, seven hundred? Ain’t nobody had a Facebook.

  There’s been a tremendous transformation. A proliferation of outlets, which is both good and bad. Good in the sense that now, young people have many more ways to consume information and absorb knowledge. And, in turn, to express themselves. If Russell Westbrook or LeBron or Swin Cash and other people are tweeting and posting on social media, they have immediate access to a nation of followers and listeners. Many of these people have fifteen, sixteen million people following them, and they’re getting their message directly to the people.

  It’s heartening because many of them are then educating themselves . . . Young activists are encouraging younger people to become involved. So there’s a beautiful consequence of transmitting that tradition from one generation to another. Hopefully, each generation digs deeper. I know a lot of people say, “Well, they have historical amnesia because they weren’t there,” but they learn like any other people learn . . . We have to acknowledge that there are varieties, means, and ways for young people to get educated. But we shouldn’t dismiss them. We shouldn’t denigrate them or demonize them. We should elevate them and celebrate them . . . So yeah, it’s refreshing and rewarding to see young people educating themselves about a myriad of social issues, and then doing whatever they can to make sure that things are changed.

  Interview with Dwyane Wade

  I was glad to be able to sit down with Dwyane Wade, who I have grown to know personally. We both had fatherhood books come out around the same time. His book, A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball, is a very good read. We’ve appeared on panels together, including the one at the Congressional Black Caucus and during NBA All-Star Weekend in Houston. Which is why it was no surprise for me to hear how the Trayvon Martin tragedy affected him personally.

  Etan: Talk about the decision to wear those hoodies as a team.

  Dwyane Wade: It really hit home for a lot of guys on the team. Obviously, being African Americans, we have to go home and talk to our kids about this situation and answer their questions and concerns and calm their fears. It was a very difficult conversation to have because it’s something that could happen to us. Being in Florida at the time and knowing that he was a big Miami Heat fan, we felt we had to make a statement and shed more light on the situation and figure out what we could do. We didn’t want this to be another incident that goes unseen and unnoticed and unheard. We wanted to really broadcast this to the entire country and the world, because we know in the NBA and being who we are that we have this massive global platform at our disposal, so we utilized it to broadcast this message. And it hit home with a lot of other people, especially when they saw us talking about how much it hit home with us.

  Etan: I remember seeing you talk about your sons and how much they loved hoodies, because at the same time I was talking about my son Malcolm about how much he loved hoodies.

  Wade: That’s definitely what it was. African American kid, tall like all our kids . . . Whatever the situation may be, we all wear hoodies. And for that to be the reason given as a justification—and why this child Trayvon Martin won’t be able to experience the fruits of this life and won’t be able to experience life, graduate, get married, have kids, just live—is really sad. He was taken off the face of the earth, and for what? Because of his hoodie? Because he didn’t have the right to be walking in the neighborhood he was walking in? For a lo
t of us, it was a talking point for us to have to sit our kids down and discuss how there are things that we don’t think about and you take for granted and how it can easily end in tragedy. I remember having the conversations with my boys, and they didn’t really understand everything exactly, but it was important to let them know and answer all of their questions and talk with them about everything that was going on.

  Etan: There is this misconception that the management or the organization would tell you not to speak out on issues like this because it could be bad for business. Or that the owner of the team would come down on you hard as far as fines or suspension or even being traded if you do something like this, on what turned out to be a very divisive, controversial case. But that didn’t seem to be what happened here with the Miami Heat organization at all. Also, it seemed to me that even if the organization was against it, by you all collectively doing this, you kind of forced their hand to go along with it.

  Wade: I think it’s just a different day. With social media being as powerful as it is, you become in essence a reporter. So it’s hard for someone to tell you not to do things or say things that you want to do on your social media platform. If the only outlet was the local media, then maybe teams would have more control over what goes out and what doesn’t, but with social media, you pretty much say what you want to say. But with us, the Heat were always supportive and never tried to deter us from getting involved. The coaches were the ones who took the pictures for us.

  Etan: The coaches?

  Wade: Yeah, they were supportive because they knew that we were passionate about it . . . I’ve honestly never been in a situation where the organization didn’t support what the players collectively wanted to say or wanted to do.

  Etan: Now take me to the Excellence in Sports Yearly Awards (ESPYs) and you and Carmelo and Chris Paul are all standing there making your statements, calling for community involvement and activism from players while addressing the systemic debasement of Black and brown people in America. What brought you all to collectively make that statement and use that particular platform of the ESPYs?

  Wade: Well, you can’t be in the position that LeBron is in, that Melo is in, myself and CP, and really care about criticism and what people say about you. As you know, we all have to deal with critics, all athletes have been for our entire athletic careers. Fifty percent of people are going to praise you and the other 50 percent are going to criticize you no matter what you do, and the flack that we’ve even taken just for being friends . . . that’s just the nature of the beast. So you just have to be true to yourself and who you are and you have to do things because you want to do them. Because it makes you happy, and makes you satisfied, not because it’s going to please other people. For us, this was a moment that was bigger than us; it was bigger than basketball. This was a moment that we could come together and use our power and speak on something that we all felt was important, and really lead the charge and challenge other athletes . . . using the platform of the ESPYs to do it.

  Etan: Many times, people almost purposely misconstrue and twist the message.

  Wade: For us, everyone had their own message that they wanted to bring to present and focus on. We wanted to talk about the killings by the police. We wanted to talk about police brutality in particular. And at the same time, we understand. CP said on stage that his uncle and grandfather are police officers, so he is definitely not antipolice. But he also acknowledged the police brutality and murders and he listed them: Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile. So we asked ourselves the question: what message did we want to come across, taking into consideration that while we are the brotherhood, we all go about things in our own particular ways? So we all sat down and we all wrote the particular message that we wanted to present to the world. And if you listen to everyone’s speeches, everyone said something that was near and dear to their hearts, to their communities and their families. My overall point was that enough is enough and I’m tired of seeing all the murders, always picking up the newspaper or turning on the news and seeing that another person has been killed by the police.

  Etan: What is it going to take to change what’s going on? There are so many young people who have developed a distrust for the police as a result of everything they keep seeing. The murders, the brutality, the beatings, the videos on social media. What do you say to them?

  Wade: I definitely understand it. And I have had conversations with young people and I have had conversations with police officers. And one of my messages to the police officers was, “Listen, you guys understand that there is a distrust of police officers, and me myself, if I see a police car behind me, it’s a very uncomfortable situation. Even me being an athlete and I know that I haven’t done anything wrong.” And I told the police officers, “Listen, if you really want to begin to change this, you have to work toward bridging the gap.” We are having all of these town hall meetings and panel discussions, let’s sit down as a community—police officers, the community leaders, and the youth leaders—and let’s have these conversations and allow everyone’s voices to be heard. You need to know what the people in the community are feeling and how they view you and why they view you that way. It’s not like they don’t have legitimate reasons or they just don’t like you because they just don’t like you. They have reasons. Experiences. Things they’ve seen. That their family and friends and loved ones have seen and experienced. And vice versa.

  The community needs to hear from the policemen. Hear the things they’ve experienced and seen and heard. As in any relationship, the best way to really understand someone’s perspective and where they are coming from is to first listen to them. Not listen to disagree with, but actually listen to understand their perspective. And both sides need to hear verbalized what the other side expects. Right now we are dealing with two sides that don’t understand each other at all. And that doesn’t lend itself to a successful or productive relationship. That was my message to the different police departments in different cities as I was meeting and talking with them.

  Interview with Carmelo Anthony

  As a Syracuse graduate, I have to admit that I do have a little bit of a bias for Carmelo Anthony. I am proud of what he has accomplished on the court, but even more proud of who he is off the court.

  So, I’m waiting after the Knicks played the Wizards to interview him. Knicks president (at that time) Phil Jackson had just floated something in the newspapers that maybe Carmelo would be better playing somewhere else. All of the media were waiting to talk to him, and then Carmelo emerges from the training room. He looked at me and smiled and gave me a hug. We briefly talked about Syracuse, and then I told him about this book and what I was doing, but in the middle of my explanation, he stopped me to say that I didn’t have to sell it, that he would be more than happy to talk because it’s something that needs to be covered.

  Etan: You were in Baltimore marching with the people after Freddie Gray was murdered by the police, and in Brazil you went to a favela, a slum. Talk about how you haven’t been afraid to speak out—and even more than just speaking out, really being among the people, almost like Muhammad Ali.

  Carmelo Anthony: I was always a part of that growing up. I was always on the other side of the fence, with the people. Everything that we have ever done growing up in my neighborhood in Baltimore, I was taught that you had to be about the people. The community. And the Freddie Gray situation really hit home for me personally because that happened in my backyard. To turn on the TV and see people that I know going through that . . . I felt the same pain that they were feeling. I felt the same heartache that they were feeling. It was really a horrific situation . . . Seeing that image of how they were carrying his body to the police van, over and over and over, it was just really terrible.

  Etan: Were you afraid of any backlash that may have come your way?

  Anthony: No, none at all. I have always kind of stayed away from politics and everything, but this was a situation where
I could not be quiet. I wouldn’t be able to look at myself in the mirror if I didn’t say something, so I decided to put my all into this . . . I wanted this family to receive justice for what had happened. I wanted there to be peace. I didn’t like seeing my city burning. I understand the anger and the frustration, but we have already suffered so much as a community, and the destruction was just painful to see taking place. We did a peaceful march. If people want to still criticize a peaceful march, then they’re gonna criticize anything we do and we can’t be worried about them. I was there for the community, my community.

  Etan: What was the reaction from the people when you were out there marching with them, rallying with them?

  Anthony: It was unbelievable. They felt like there was hope. They had somebody there who was fighting with them and fighting for them who was already out of that situation but hadn’t forgotten about them . . . They felt like there was some hope for justice. Because you have to remember, at that time, a long time had gone by and nobody had provided any answers whatsoever about Freddie Gray’s spinal injuries sustained while in police custody. They wanted answers and for somebody to be held accountable for what had happened. And they weren’t getting any answers. So for me to come there fighting for justice, it meant a lot to the people to know that I was just as frustrated as they were . . . They had every right to demand answers and to be upset. We just gotta go about it the right way.