[R-G] Will Obama Presidency Ease Barriers to Politically Outspoken Black Athletes?

[Anthony Fenton]

November 10, 2008
Will Obama Presidency Ease Barriers to Politically Outspoken Black  
Athletes?

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/10/will_obama_presidency_ease_barriers_to


Professional athletes, especially African American athletes, have long  
been rebuked for speaking out on political issues. Could the Obama  
presidency herald a change? We speak to sportswriter David Zirin,  
author of A People’s History of Sports in the United States. [includes  
rush transcript]


Guest:

Dave Zirin, author of a number of books about politics and sports. His  
latest is A People’s History of Sports in the United States. He is a  
regular contributor to The Nation magazine and writes a weekly column  
called “Edge of Sports.”

...

JUAN GONZALEZ: The historic 2008 presidential election has seen the  
world of politics enter the world of sports to an extent not seen in  
this country in a generation. More athletes are using their national  
platform to speak out than they have in recent memory. But, as so  
often happens in sports, athletes are reprimanded for trying to make  
their voices heard.

Take what happened last week during a nationally televised football  
game on Thursday night, two days after Election Night. Near the end of  
the game, Denver Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall caught the  
winning touchdown pass against the Cleveland Browns. Marshall’s plan  
was to then take out a black-and-white glove and hold it up to the sky  
as a symbol of unity. But his teammates stopped him on the field for  
fear of risking a penalty that could have cost them the game. Marshall  
was asked about it afterwards in a post-game wrap up.

       INTERVIEWER: Alright, Brandon, I’ve got to ask you. At the end  
of the ballgame, I saw you fooling with your gloves or something. You  
was about to go do something. What did you have in mind?

       BRANDON MARSHALL: Well, I mean, this was a historical year for  
America. And, you know, when we look at the forty-fourth president,  
Barack Obama, he inspired me, and not just me and my teammates, but  
the nation. And back in the ’68 Olympics, you know, a couple of our  
track stars sat on a podium, and they threw up their Black Panther  
sign just for black power and liberation. But in my own way, I wanted  
to pay respect to our nation and the progress we made, so I got a  
white glove painted black half and half. And it’s not about black  
power, and it’s not about white or black; it’s about USA, red, white  
and blue. And that’s what I was going to do, but Stokley came and  
said, “It’s too close of a ballgame. You might get flagged. So put it  
back in.”

       INTERVIEWER: Where is it? Where is it?

       BRANDON MARSHALL: I got rid of it. Old Vet told me to get rid  
of it.

       INTERVIEWER: You got that right.


AMY GOODMAN: Denver Broncos’ Brandon Marshall. He was later criticized  
by pundits on ESPN and in the sports blogosphere for the planned  
gesture. But sportswriter Dave Zirin thinks otherwise. He writes:  
“Instead of derision, Marshall merited our respect—sports fan or not— 
which should actually be exponentially higher since he was willing to  
take this risk when the game was on the line. The image of a pro  
football player raising a black-and-white hand to the skies forty  
years after Smith and Carlos and two days after the election of a  
black president in a country built on slavery could have echoed  
through the ages.”

Well, Dave Zirin joins us now from Washington, D.C., author of many  
books on politics and sports—his latest, A People’s History of Sports  
in the United States—a regular contributor to The Nation, and writes a  
weekly column called “Edge of Sports.”

Welcome, Dave Zirin. Your thoughts, again, on Brandon Marshall?

DAVE ZIRIN: Well, it’s interesting, because you hear the kind of  
camaraderie and laughter when he was describing what he did, but the  
sports media really came down on him like a ton of bricks.

And I just want to repeat my respect for him for what he did, because,  
first of all, he was doing it for a team, the Denver Broncos, which  
actually has a formal policy against bringing politics into the locker  
room, so a very straitlaced, anti-political, frankly, anti- 
progressive, atmosphere that tries to stifle free speech among athletes.

And the second thing, I mean, the game was on the line, so you talk  
about trying to do a political gesture where it actually means  
something. I mean, I think that could have been something that would  
have been an educational moment for sports fans.

And lastly, the NFL does not have guaranteed contracts. So you talk  
about risking something, I mean, he was risking everything. And I  
think it would have been a great moment.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Dave, how difficult has it become for professional  
athletes these days? I think back to the days when Bill Walton was an  
antiwar opponent with the Portland Trailblazers. How difficult these  
days is it for athletes to speak their mind?

DAVE ZIRIN: Well, it’s always been difficult, particularly over these  
last twenty years, when sports has morphed into this trillion-dollar  
corporate business. But I’ll tell you something. Since Hurricane  
Katrina in 2005, there has been a real buzz, where athletes are  
starting to be more political and speak out. And I’ve never seen  
anything like it with this election season. I mean, that wall between  
sports and politics hasn’t just been breached, it’s been obliterated.  
I mean, and I’m not just talking about Barack Obama shooting three- 
point shots in front of the troops or Sarah Palin dropping the puck at  
a hockey game and getting booed off the ice, although that was very  
funny. I’m talking about other things, like people like LeBron James,  
the basketball star, wearing Obama shirts and holding fundraisers; NBA  
players Baron Davis and Chauncey Billups holding fundraisers, as well;  
Carmelo Anthony saying he was going to score forty-four points in a  
game on Wednesday in tribute to the forty-fourth president; Kevin  
Garnett writing “vote for change” on his sneakers going out on the  
court. I mean, we really are in some uncharted territory, or at least  
territory we haven’t seen for decades.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Zirin, when I opened Juan’s paper yesterday, the New  
York Daily News, I was surprised to see a column by you, and the  
headline was this question: “Did Tiger Woods Pave Barack Obama’s Path?  
Are You Joking?”

DAVE ZIRIN: “Are you joking?” Let me tell you something. The sports  
world will always try to break its arm patting itself on its back when  
it comes to progress and trying to say that it reflects the sports  
world’s progress on issues. A column was written in the Orlando  
Sentinel by Mike Bianchi that made a very simple argument. It said  
that because so many millions of white Americans have been cheering  
for years for people like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan, that really  
paved the way for Obama’s victory. And I thought that was rather  
ridiculous, and let me say why.

First of all, I mean, whites have been cheering for African American  
athletic achievement, you know, since the times of slavery. I mean,  
this was something that happened on plantations, and that didn’t  
necessarily lead to political progress. Second of all, there’s a big  
difference between cheering for somebody’s athletic achievement and  
accepting their political leadership. I mean, it’s night and day,  
apples and oranges, Sarah Palin and Amy Goodman. These are very  
different worlds.

And then, lastly, the fact that Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Tony  
Dungy were held up—Tony Dungy, who’s a very successful African  
American football coach—was very bizarre to me. I mean, first of all,  
Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods are two of the most aggressively  
apolitical athletes that have existed on the sports scene in some  
time. They’re the exemplars of the apolitical athlete. And Tony Dungy,  
while being a man of great respect who’s held in high regard, is also  
somebody with close ties to Focus on the Family and the anti-gay  
marriage movement. So you think about why people waited on line for so  
many hours to vote for Barack Obama, I think it was to move away from  
a lot of the politics that people like Woods, Jordan and Dungy  
actually represent.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a connection between the corporatization of  
sports and the silencing of dissent, Dave Zirin? I also said we were  
going to have Etan Thomas on, NBA star, plays for the Washington  
Wizards, but we can’t seem to get him on the line, so we’ll have him  
on another day. But Dave?

DAVE ZIRIN: Well, I’ll tell you, I do think that there is a very  
strong connection. I write for Slam magazine, which is a basketball  
magazine, and I speak to a lot of NBA players. And what’s interesting  
is that there are two names that all NBA players seem to know, and  
those names are Craig Hodges and Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. And what those  
two players have in common is that they both took political stands in  
the 1990s, and they were both drummed out of the league. And they know  
those names, because their agents, their managers, they say to them,  
“Look, you are risking the attendant privileges that come with being a  
professional athlete if you speak out.”

And that’s why, to me, one of the great quotes of this election season  
was when Baron Davis, the point guard for the LA Clippers, he was  
doing organizing in the presidential race, and he was told by his  
manager, “Look, if you do this, you’re going to risk your endorsement  
deals.” And Baron Davis’s response was, “Like a give a bleep.” And he  
didn’t say “bleep.” I mean, I’m just making the point that that’s the  
only way this is going to change, is that if athletes refuse to be  
brands, refuse to be empty vessels for product placement and start to  
say, “You know what? I’m not just a robot with legs. I have a mind, as  
well as a body. I have this hyper-exalted brought-to-you-by-Nike  
platform. I’m actually going to do something with it.”

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Dave, of course, all of these athletes were acting  
within the realm of a political election, not necessarily a social  
cause, although obviously many see the election of Barack Obama as  
part of a social movement. How hard is it for them, when it comes to  
social causes, to be able to speak out?

DAVE ZIRIN: Well, that’s what’s going to be very interesting about  
this. I mean, passion, particularly political passion, abhors a  
vacuum. And you’ve had so many athletes, as well as so many sports  
fans, for that matter, devote passion into this election season. It’s  
going to be very interesting to see where that passion goes moving  
forward. I mean, people get politicized around all kinds of issues.  
And in this case, it was a movement to elect the first African  
American president. Is that just going to die right now, or is it  
going to move forward? I mean, that is really, to me, an unanswered  
question. And whether people stay on the frontlines and don’t just  
say, “Yeah, we elected Obama,” but we actually want results on  
bringing the troops home from Iraq, on having real aid for working  
families, and if Obama drags his feet on these issues, if people  
actually stand up and say, “Wait a minute. You made promises. You  
promised us hope and change. We’re going to stand for that,” and if  
that really gets into the world of sports and athletes, that could be  
a fascinating development.

AMY GOODMAN: Dave Zirin, we’re going to leave it there. Thanks so  
much. Among his books, his latest, A People’s History of Sports in the  
United States.