by Etan Thomas
Etan: Were you as surprised as I was to see some Black faces in the sports world standing next to Trump, urging other people to support him?
Abdul-Jabbar: Nothing really surprised me, Etan. Anytime someone like that can win the nomination, you know that there is a lot more to it than meets the eye. There is a lot of nostalgia for the good ol’ days, right after World War II and thereabouts, where the people who controlled everything politically and economically were very comfortable. And that’s changed a lot since then, and Trump brings back a nostalgia for that . . . So we have to be fully aware of what’s going on and do our due diligence before we support anyone or allow ourselves to be used in that manner. We can’t be puppets. We have to be educated, informed, knowledgeable people who can in turn use our platform and our powers for good, not allow ourselves to be used or exploited or taken advantage of for a photo op and used for evil. I can’t belabor the point enough that the vote counts, and is of the utmost importance. And we have to be very careful of who we align ourselves with.
Etan: How do you feel about seeing young athletes being as involved as they are these days?
Abdul-Jabbar: I know that the young athletes are noticing what has been going on and they are alarmed. And I’m glad to see that they are paying attention and they are doing something about it. Just the fact that they are calling attention to what the issues are is helping. When athletes speak out, it creates an immediate dialogue . . . When a prominent athletes takes a stand, he is going to shed light on that topic and people are going to start talking about it . . . You can’t change people’s minds if people don’t discuss the issues. They may see something or hear a point of view that they never would have imagined. And sometimes they can’t hear that from other political figures because the political line in the sand has been drawn . . .
But most, most important, and I know I have repeated this like a broken record, but I am going to end with this: we have to get out and vote and athletes have to use their platforms to urge the masses to get out and vote . . . We can’t complain after the fact, and have voter turnouts as low as they are. Youth voter turnout is consistently lower than the older generation . . . And not just the presidential elections, but local elections—the elections that decide who the mayor will be, who the police chief will be, who the local officials will be that directly impact their everyday lives. We have to keep encouraging the masses to vote so that we don’t allow a catastrophe like Mr. Trump to ever happen again.
Chapter 9
Connecting with Activists Matters
I watched the five-episode documentary O.J.: Made in America with my son Malcolm and he had a lot of questions. The film explores O.J. Simpson’s arrival at the University of Southern California as the unstoppable running back who ran his way into a Heisman Trophy and into the hearts of mainstream America. This is what O.J. had always dreamed of.
“As a kid growing up in the ghetto, one of the things I wanted most was not money—it was fame. I wanted to be known. I wanted people to say, ‘Hey, there goes O.J.’”
Malcolm asked, “Why did he care so much what other people thought of him?” I told him to keep watching.
The documentary reveals how much O.J. was completely removed from and oblivious to everything that was going on around him as it pertained to the Black community. While O.J. was enjoying his newfound fame at USC, racial turmoil in neighborhoods near the campus gave rise to turbulent times. The documentary shows the great migration of African Americans to California, pursuing jobs and fleeing Jim Crow and the bigotry of the South. Many whites were not too happy with their new neighbors. The prevailing notion was that California was a utopia where prejudice and hate didn’t exist; unfortunately, many of the Blacks who arrived found out that it was in fact far from a racially harmonious paradise.
When William H. Parker was appointed chief of police in 1950, LA’s white population applauded and welcomed a new era of policing that boasted a military-like professionalism.
Yet the Black community faced increased incidents of police brutality and harassment—things that just didn’t happen in the white communities.
Then there was the eventual tipping point of the Watts riots of 1965, when the entire city exploded amid growing tensions between the Black community and the police. Los Angeles went up in flames. Six days of looting and arson followed. The LAPD called in the support of thousands of members of the National Guard.
Malcolm watched the scene unfolding and said, “That looks just like Ferguson after Mike Brown or Baltimore after Freddie Gray.” My wife glanced at me with sad eyes.
In the film, Dr. Harry Edwards discusses how athletes were looking to respond to the Watts riots and everything else that was going on. At a press conference to announce the Olympic Project for Human Rights—an organization formed to bring attention to racism and prejudice in sports—it was announced that the athletes were considering an Olympic boycott. When O.J. was asked about his position, he quickly distanced himself, saying that what the other athletes were doing was their own prerogative but he wasn’t going to be involved. Dr. Harry Edwards offers his explanation: the athletes were tired of seeing our people being treated as second-class citizens, and if O.J., as one of the most popular athletes at that time, had joined them, it would have made a huge impact on the movement. That’s when O.J. uttered the words that made Malcolm pause the TV: “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.”
“What on earth did he mean by that?” asked Malcolm. He repeated it three times in disbelief.
I told him to keep watching and we’d talk after the episode. Malcolm saw the situation get worse and worse. He watched O.J.’s friends describe how he lost himself. How disappointed they were with some of his decisions and choices. After the episode’s conclusion, Malcolm asked, “Why didn’t some older people try to talk to O.J. or something? Mentor him? Give him some good advice? Why didn’t his friends tell him he was tripping?” I said that I’d bet they tried but I wasn’t sure he was listening to their advice.
So Malcolm said it again: “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.” He thought about it for a while and then put it all together. “So when he was at the table at the bar with the one guy—what was his name?”
“That was Joe Namath,” I said.
“Yeah, him. Well, he was at the table at his bar and the white lady asked the old white man why O.J. was sitting there with all of those N-words, and the old white guy told O.J. what the lady said and was trying to apologize to O.J. and the dude was smiling and happy like, No, it’s great, this is exactly what I’ve always wanted. They don’t look at me as one of them. And he said that he knew at that moment that O.J. was . . . screwed. He didn’t say screwed, but I can’t say what he said.” Malcolm continued, “Isn’t that even worse for an old white guy to be able to see that there was something wrong with that, but O.J. couldn’t?”
I told him yeah, it seemed pretty bad to me.
And then Malcolm said, “So, when all that bad stuff that was going on with the police beating the Black people and hitting them with their batons and snatching them up for no reason, and it was all happening right around the corner from the school O.J. was going to, and all the Black athletes wanted to do something major like boycott the Olympics and they tried to get him on board with them, he said, ‘I’m not Black, I’m O.J.,’ because he didn’t want to make the white people mad at him and wanted to be in all the commercials so he could be running through the airport and on TV and movies and all of that. He cared more about that than standing up for the Black community?”
“Well, it looks like you pieced it all together, Malcolm. If you want, you can write your school report about this.”
“Oh, this will be easy to write. This is not going to end well. Hope he wakes up before it’s too late. Did he eventually wake up? Did somebody talk to him before it was too late?”
My wife and I looked at each other and shook our heads. I said, “We’ll just watch the rest of the episodes and I think you’ll get your answer.”
> After watching the full documentary, I wanted to interview sociologist and civil rights activist Dr. Harry Edwards. He currently works as a team consultant for the San Francisco 49ers and has mentored Colin Kaepernick. I wanted to ask him about the “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.” statement, and go a little deeper into the ramifications of athletes adopting that type of a mentality. I also wanted to discuss the mentoring and nurturing he provided for Kaepernick and how important it is for athletes to receive that kind of guidance.
Interview with Dr. Harry Edwards
Etan: You have said that you believe Colin Kaepernick should be in the Smithsonian right next to Muhammad Ali and John Carlos and Tommie Smith.
Dr. Harry Edwards: I definitely feel that he should be in the Smithsonian and the National Museum of African American History and Culture right alongside Ali and Jim Brown and Bill Russell and Arthur Ashe and John Carlos and Tommie Smith and Curt Flood and Paul Robeson and some of these other great athlete-activists who have made such great contributions over the past decades in terms of the struggle for African American freedom, justice, and equality . . . Muhammad Ali was in one sense the godfather of the militant athlete-activist movement in the 1960s, beginning with his outspokenness . . . We have a whole generation of athletes who followed in that tradition of Ali and who in a sense broke with their fathers . . . that group that had come before in the post–World War II years into the 1960s.
Kaepernick provided that same function for this era of athletes. In speaking out—not after he was through playing and it was safe and he was away and nobody could say anything negatively about the team or the organization. He did it while he was an active athlete and, point of fact, while he was a backup, which did not detract from the courage and the sincerity of his message but magnified it . . . He ignited something that all of the congresspeople, all of the preachers and protesters and community organizers, including President Obama, had never been able to fully achieve. He got everybody from the president down to the people on the street talking about race, its meaning in this age, and how it is still contouring and influencing the quality and the caliber of life in American society . . . So I think it’s appropriate that Colin Kaepernick’s jersey, the Time cover that he was on, that all should be put in the Smithsonian right next to Muhammad Ali’s gloves that he wore when he defeated Sonny Liston and the robe that he wore when he fought in the United States Olympic team in Rome.
Etan: You have spoken about how Malcolm X counseled Muhammad Ali. Were you able to be that counselor to Kaepernick, giving him guidance on how to handle the criticism that was sure to come?
Edwards: Absolutely. Everything from what he should be reading, such as The Autobiography of Malcolm X, various writings and articles by Muhammad Ali, right up to what to expect and how to handle the death threats that were inevitably going to come. I made it very clear that there is a price to pay for this type of a stance and he understood that and he was totally committed to doing all that he possibly could to educate and prepare himself for the stand he was taking.
I never tried to tell Kap what to do. That’s not the job of a counselor . . . I’ve never counseled athletes about what to do. What I’ve counseled them about are what the options are and what the likely outcomes of those options will most likely be, and then I leave it to the athletes to make up their own minds about what they’re going to do and how they are going to do it. I let Kap know unequivocally and absolutely I was always there for him, and if he had any questions or had any issues or if anything came up, I would be here to help as much as I possibly could . . . And of course, at the end of the season his teammates voted him the most prestigious award that the San Francisco 49ers organization gives to a player—the Len Eshmont Award for courage and strength—so that is indicative of the fact that Kap handled himself very well in terms of his teammates in the locker room.
Etan: I recently watched the ESPN documentary O.J.: Made in America. It shows what you tried to convince O.J. to do, and how he basically rejected taking any part in the type of thing Kaepernick is doing.
Edwards: Here is the conundrum in regards to this situation. When I approached O.J. about supporting the Olympic Project for Human Rights, he was very, very clear. When I said Black Athletes are looking to unite, he stopped me and said, “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.,” and what he was saying wasn’t that he felt he wasn’t Black racially, he was saying that he wasn’t Black in terms of the orthodoxy, that demands that there is a pattern that all Black people must subscribe to . . . And his point was well taken. I had to stop and pause, because what he was saying essentially was, “Larry Bird is not obligated . . . to stand up for all poor white people in French Lick, Indiana. So why should I be obligated to move away from everything I have worked for and be asked to make this tremendous sacrifice and stand up for all Black people in America?” That’s a legitimate question.
Now, what’s equally legitimate is, if you decide not to do that, there’s a price to be paid for it. And Black people have every right to collect that price and that cost. So when somebody makes a statement like, “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.,” they are telling you who and what they are. That is what they have chosen . . . There is a legitimate question as to the obligation of every athlete to do that. But you also pay for the choice that you make. So O.J., in doing what he did, made his choice.
And Black people have every right to collect that price and that cost. So when somebody makes a statement like, “I’m not Black, I’m O.J.,” they are telling you who and what they are. That is what they have chosen.
Etan: Expound on that for me, if you could.
Edwards: It goes back to an old saying that has been passed around in the African American community. What does a man gain who wins the world but loses his soul? Something along those lines. Black folks know that. They feel that. And even though they cheered when O.J. beat the rap on those two murders, they weren’t cheering for O.J. They were cheering for all of those Black people who had been abused and beaten and stomped down by the police and the justice system for generations and generations . . . So the question comes back up: is there an obligation for Black athletes or Black media to stand up for the Black community and speak on the behalf of the Black community? Because nobody puts that on Larry Bird.
And my answer to that is that white people are not in the same position as Black people here in America. So Larry Bird doesn’t really have a dog in that fight. In America, there are people on death row for no other reason but that they are Black . . . There are people who are unemployed because they are Black. Little kids in school being suspended and expelled because they are Black. Little white kids doing the same thing are treated differently. There are people who are oppressed because they are Black. Murdered by the police because they are Black.
Etan: When Kaepernick took his stance during the national anthem, at first none of the other players really supported him. It looked like he was really out there by himself, and we know that throughout history, so many great people who stand for something are often standing alone. Did that affect Kaepernick?
Edwards: Well, first of all, my office at the San Francisco 49ers is the locker room . . . So anyone who thinks that Kaepernick didn’t have any support in the locker room because he was the only one who took the knee has greatly misread the situation. The struggle for freedom, justice, and equality in the Black culture and community is so pervasive and so all-encompassing that even when people are not willing to necessarily stand with an individual, although they may not have physically joined the movement, it won’t be long before they are still saying, “Amen” . . . He said things that most of us didn’t have the position or the courage to say, and we not only supported him, but we loved him. And so even when Kap was sitting and kneeling by himself, when you talked to in particular the Black athletes, they said, “Yeah, we understand what the brother is saying. Am I ready to do it with him? No, but do I support him? Yes.” So the idea of people around the league getting his message and people around
the league supporting him and respecting him are two very different things. They got his message even though they didn’t take a knee with him . . . I don’t care if Kaepernick never does another thing in his life on the football field or off of it. That puts him in the same category as Ali in sports, as Rosa Parks in the nonviolent direct-action civil rights struggle.
A lot of times you can’t see it until you’re a long way away because history is like a mountain. And you can’t see the mountain when you are right on top of it. You have to be a distance away from it before you can see it . . . So I insisted, I talked to the people at the Smithsonian, I talked to them about Kaepernick and his role in this situation, and their response was, “Absolutely.” Even if people can’t see it today, they will see it ten, twenty, thirty years from now, or like Ali, fifty years from now.
Interview with Ilyasah Shabazz
Every athlete needs a mentor. Someone to guide them, prepare them, encourage them. Someone who they can bounce ideas off of. I was blessed to always have mentors in my life. My grandfather; my AAU coach Reverend Potter; Louis Orr, my assistant coach at Syracuse; my current pastor, John K. Jenkins. You need people who will tell you the absolute truth and are not in the least bit worried about offending you, hurting your feelings, or damaging your relationship with them. Mentoring is often what athletes point to as one of the vital reasons for their success; or they might say that the absence of it contributed to their demise.