NBA players forced the postponement of today’s games, and the easiest, quickest criticism for these players’ decisions is, “What is this going to do?”
For those unaware, none of the scheduled NBA games tonight are taking place, after the Milwaukee Bucks and Orlando Magic refused to take the floor out of protest in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake. The other teams scheduled to play followed suit, and the NBA postponed the day’s games. Social media is flooded with responses, many falling into the camp of either roaring applause, criticism, or sarcastic “Glad this boycott will fix racism” comments.
Before we go further, yes, there are questions to be answered even after watching the video. Every situation requires us to stop, think, consider the whole story, and then move forward with action.
With that being said, this shooting continues to bring up conversation about the training, methods, potential biases, and areas of needed improvement of law enforcement and our leaders. And for the Black community, we’re flat out tired of seeing people hurt.
Finally, claiming a person’s past record justifies their ultimate fate at a latter time is questionable. We probably all do it, and probably all should reconsider.
….
“What is this going to do?” or, “What can I/we do?”
That’s the same type of question that’s been asked a ton over the past several months. Virtually everybody I’ve known who has reached out, or expressed empathy and a heart to serve to unheard, has wanted to know what we can do.
Over the course of 10 weeks, my church small group went through White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White, by Daniel Hill, pastor at River City Community Church in Chicago. As we discovered, it took us the entire book to even begin answering that question of what we can do.
That’s because while “doing” is the first thing that we culturally are trained to seek, it’s the last thing we address on our journeys of understanding injustices, inequalities, prejudices, and biases.
Each chapter of this book described a stage we must go through (the order doesn’t matter) on our way to being awakened to the pervasiveness of inequalities and white supremacy in America. And while there is far too much to discuss in this post, the overall takeaway is one that speaks so loudly in the silence of an unoccupied basketball court in the midst of the NBA playoffs.
That takeaway is that these issues are real, essential to the core of people of color and many others, and way bigger than basketball. So, the response to “What is this going to do?” is, hopefully, it makes more and more people ask “Why do these players have to do this?” No, you can’t answer that question for them with “to instantly solve racism,” no matter how serious or sarcastic you’re being. Just like everyone, they’re putting in a ton of work to try to answer the question in a way that might be understood. For us, today is like another family emergency.
If the answer were that easy, we wouldn’t have the problems we’ve had for so long here.
The answer lies in continuing to educate ourselves about our country’s history, accepting that that history still lives today, and never stopping our pursuit of greater understanding and the understanding of others. That could mean really hard conversations with friends and family, or gentle pushback to complete strangers.
We can then take that understanding and empathy and use it toward policies and leadership that actively work to eliminate bias and privilege.
It’s a long road, and for at least one night, it will not, and should not, be traversed on a basketball court. Much love y’all.