I woke up this morning with the image of Dominic Smith in my head. His voice choking back tears and the pure pain in his eyes. I thought about how I know I’ll never be able to fully understand what it feels like to be black in America, but I know I can understand his emotions. I know that I can put myself in a situation to succumb to his hurt and allow myself to connect to his heart. I know I can listen to him and learn from him.
Athletes are forced to be in the public at all times. Their internal struggles, family issues, and personal loss they deal with are put on the backburner. That is the job. But that job becomes hard to do when the one overwhelming feeling you have is that people do not care about your life. They do not care if you live or die, they do not care if you survive confrontation, and they do not care that your entire identity is traced directly to the color of your skin. How can we expect athletes of color to be perfect on the field when we have not been even remotely close to perfect for them in life? How can we as American people represent such divisiveness, little to no empathy, deny systemic issues of race in this country, while expecting black athletes to entertain us? How can we expect them to be an outlet for our entertainment when we have failed and so drastically ignored them?
I think back to a time where sports were a direct outlet for healing. The September baseball game at Shea Stadium and the homerun that ignited an entire city, an entire country. The first professional sporting event that took place in New York City after September 11th reflected a city in such deep pain, recovering from loss, reeling for any sort of normalcy, even for a moment. Piazza stepped up and put the entire city on his back. He hit a homerun that night for the American people and New Yorkers who were suffering. The cheers that erupted will never be forgotten; the feeling of relief lives inside many of us to this day. The homerun represented the first sign of hope after extensive loss and it represented a country united in one, looking to the same outlet for an escape.
And even after the horror we endured on that day, it was a time of unity and of common ground struggle. It was the only time I can remember when the entire country came together and healed together. It was the only time where sports were a real outlet for pain and suffering, where their presence could realistically put the struggles of the country behind if only for a few hours a night. We were in agreement – liberals, conservatives, black or white, we were all fighting the same enemy and we all felt just as unsafe.
We are not in that place today. We have no unity, we have no leadership, we have no home run that will take away the pain of Black people. We have no clear direction for change, and we have no hope or protection for those who are being oppressed. We can’t look to NBA players to be our entertainment when we refuse to accept their livelihoods are valued. We can’t expect MLB players to suit up and compete to the best of their ability when they have just watched another person who looks like them get shot in the back 7 times by police. We cannot expect athletes to function as usual when our current climate is not usual. Sports are no longer an escape, rather a reflection of the pain and suffering that is taking place in this country.
And because of that, you can’t use sports as an escape when the people entertaining us are the ones begging to be listened to. You can’t expect to feel joy and glee from athletes when post-game interviews are messages of hurt, loss, and loneliness.
We can no longer trust change to come from those we have been taught will protect us. It is only the extreme exhaustion of the same old same that has forced Black athletes and their white teammates to take control of the narrative and direct it towards non-performative change.
We should not be emotionally profiting off of black athletes while simultaneously refusing to acknowledge their own emotions. We can’t claim sports as a form of healing when we aren’t concerned with the healing of those playing. We can’t tell Black athletes to distract us and ignore what is happening to their their brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers, or try to police the pain of others. We don’t get to decide when someone should turn their emotions on and off. We do not get to claim their attention to help us sleep at night. Until we can accept what is happening in our country, we simply do not deserve sports.
babeswhoball.com 