Monroe Dispatch - No Struggle, No Progress

Sports and Racism

By Eddie D. Gillis

Normally about this time of year, football stadiums across this nation would be welcoming its legions of fans, as the “king of sports” takes center stage. Sports has always been an entertaining venue for millions of people the world over because bragging rights becomes a fixture all around cities/communities for who is the best or has the best team. Sports is also a place where people from all walks of life come together for a common purpose and that is to win a championship and take home the trophy. Before integration when teams were of one color/ethnicity, there was no Jackie Robinson(baseball) or Arthur Ashe(tennis) who had to contend with people who didn’t want you on their team or in their organization. It didn’t take long for the pioneer Black athlete to know who was accepting and who wasn’t. But once integration happened and white owners “suddenly” knew the value of a Black athlete on his team, the Black athlete became a hot commodity. Nonetheless, past resentment didn’t just drop overnight from some white teammates. However, that didn’t stop white coaches whether on the professional or collegiate level from recruiting Black athletes because the Black athlete brought revenue (a lot of it) to their pockets and over the years some were able to have new stadiums to play in because the owners had record crowds making them even richer. As race relations got better, Black people became more a part of the American dream thanks to the advancements in civil rights.

Black athletes may have had to adjust in their new surroundings in places where at one time they were never accepted, but also white athletes who had to all of a sudden compete with and against Black athletes. We have often heard of lasting friendships that have developed over the years between Black and white former athletes no matter what team they played on. Black athletes felt that “they knew” what made a person tick from their days on the playing field or the time they spent together when they weren’t playing. However, in this present climate of stark racial divide lead by a president who wants to lead only a segment of this nation, it is not surprising that some of the white players who saw Black athletes as their “comrades” in their playing days don’t see them that way or Black people as “good in character” as they supposedly are. Brian Urlacher who played for the Chicago Bears had Black athletes on his team for years and he was seen as the “ultimate” player at his position. He was the kind of athlete that stood for Mom, apple pie and the American way. He seems to have gotten along with his Black teammates. Imagine the surprise(?) of some of those former Bears teammates to learn of a tweet/like that attributed to Urlacher’s social media account where he wrote, that Brett Favre threw four touchdowns on the day his father died, while NBA players boycotted some games because “some Black dude” (Jacob Blake) was killed by the police. He allegedly tweeted a “like” response to Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who killed two people at a Kenosha, Wisconsin protests while police watched him leave after bystanders tried to get them to stop the alleged killer. Urlacher’s apparent detachment from reality showed that he cared more about a football player’s accomplishment on the field in spite of a loved one’s death, but thought nothing of a Black man being shot 7 times in the back by a white police office. The Bears football organization distanced themselves from Urlacher’s action, as sports commentators derided him for his posts.

It has to make one think or believe that those kinds of thoughts were already in Urlacher when he was a younger man who had to play with/against Black athletes who were just as good or better than he was. He may have kept his resentment to himself since we didn’t hear anything from him when Kaepernick started kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem. He didn’t voice his resentment/anger as other Black athletes began to take a knee. Now in many sports such the NBA, soccer, WNBA, MLB prominent Black athletes are raising their voices. Nevertheless, it seems that when Black NBA players refused to play, that unnerved Urlacher. No one has explicitly called Urlacher a racist, but people who know/knew him as a “friend”, will certainly look at him differently. Sometimes in life, we don’t actually know a person until a side of them comes out where one would expect compassion for someone who is a stranger, than someone you knew as a “great” football player. Maybe he forgot that the people who helped him look good on the football field were the same color as the man who was shot 7 times in the back. A fact that didn’t seem to faze him. Urlacher is not alone as there are others who may be Trump supporters that are open in their feelings when it comes to race relations. It is now “open season” when it comes to race, people who were quiet, are saying what’s on their mind. The president loves it. What Urlacher’s actions mean to the younger athletes on the high school/collegiate level will have to be dealt with by coaches who don’t walk around thinking like Brian Urlacher. Sports brought us together, don’t let it break us apart. We still have a ways to go.