MC Fall 2020

SPORTS
Advocating
for equality in
CREATIVE ENCLAVE
sports
By James Onuska
Fans look to see their favorite players drop 30 in
a victory on the hardwood. They look for their
quarterback to distribute the football among their
teammates and lead their team to victory, and they
look for their leading r.b.i. left fielder to go 3-4 while
driving in three runs in a team win. What fans see
now are players using their platform to advocate for
ending racial injustice and police brutality. In 2016,
a rising star used his platform to call for the end of
those heinous practices and requesting equality.
Colin Kaepernick has found himself blackballed
from the game he cherished playing as a youth and
building a career in the NFL which included taking
the San Francisco 49ers to the Superbowl in 2013.
Since Kaepernick’s stance on social injustice and
police brutality, other players have followed suit.
Is this behavior unacceptable in any level of sports
or are they supposed to “shut up and dribble”,
words famously uttered by Fox News host Laura
Ingraham to NBA star LeBron James.
Regardless of the status of these athletes, their
advocating for equality is worthy and necessary.
Since the revolutionary campaign on behalf of
coequality and fairness by athletes Kaepernick,
LeBron and others, the spread of peaceful
demonstrations have been seen throughout all
levels of sports. High school football teams have
taken a knee during the playing of the National
Anthem with hopes of bringing light to impartiality
seen in America. Players from the WNBA down to
the high school have elected to wear apparel that
requests justice and equal
opportunity in women’s sports. These actions have
brought a tremendous amount of criticism and even
cost immense amounts of controversy through
social media outlets. What these athletes are
doing is exercising their First Amendment right of
freedom of speech that is supposed to be protected
by the US Constitution.
“As this country
continues to fight for
equality, it is everyone’s
responsibility to stand
up for what’s right. “
Numerous organizations and people have
called for some sort of course of action. Suggestions
of defunding the police which is when you
redirect funding to a police department to other
government agencies. By doing this, training
and other resources could be made accessible for
departments to use to help with training and create
a more obliging atmosphere. There’s also the Black
Lives Matter movement which is a social movement
that advocates against incidents of police brutality
and all racially motivated violence against Black
people. These have been discussed with enormous
variance and should just boil down to having
respect for your fellow brothers and sisters. This
country is a very diverse nation in the world and it
would behove everyone to unite as one and have
mutual respect for one another while embracing
equality.
With the nation in monumental agitation,
people look for ways they are able to show their
objection for the social injustices carried out by
fellow Americans. Coach DeLisha Milton-Jones,
the women’s basketball coach described how the
coaching staff has approached the team and says
“we have clearance to do certain things from higher
ups and the administration and that’s something
I’m going to take to the team and where they want
to go with it,” said Coach Milton-Jones goes on to
say how the team is a unified front and definitely
for equality and stand firm on that notion. ODU’s
women’s basketball forward Victoria Morris
explained how the team has considered several
options but haven’t decided on what they will do
but know that they 100% stand for equality. We
asked ODU’s football cornerback Kaleb Ford-
Dement the same thing and his response mirrored
Victoria Morris’s and also stands for equality.
As this country continues to fight for equality,
it is everyone’s responsibility to stand up for what’s
right. Athletes are not exempt, they have as much
of a right as the people who are protesting.These
courageous individuals are conducting themselves
peacefully and doing so to achieve equality. If
taking a knee or wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt
during pregame warmups is offensive, the lives lost
because of social injustice should be what is really
addressed. When voices start to be heard, maybe
people will start to change for the better.
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