Ways of Grace

by James Blake

  “We hope to empower athletes, athlete activism, and athlete leadership. We work with mainly those who are in the professional space, although there are some collegiate athletes there, those who have already decided to use their voice, decided to use their platforms, and we try to find ways and strategies in which we can help them and even make recommendations.”

  Athletes have a greater reach, a bond, a platform, and a phenomenal ability to connect with hundreds of thousands of people instantaneously. I asked MacIntosh if RISE instructs or cautions athletes about utilizing this immediate access. This is important because there has been backlash that comes from taking a stand or making an act in the moment, as we’ve seen with Colin Kaepernick, and with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers receiver Mike Evans, who protested the election of Donald Trump during a game by not standing for the anthem. How do you prepare the younger athletes and talk to some of the more established athletes about how to prepare or to come back from what can be at times substantial repercussions? Do you prepare them beforehand for how they should best make a statement or action? And do you talk to them about recouping once they have done something that has incurred a pushback?

  “For me it has to be twofold. Athletes have to be prepared in advance of taking a stand. And certainly I would expect athletes to be taking stands throughout their careers, maybe not around a topic that might be so divisive, or a topic that might be so contentious, but I expect them to be taking stands throughout their careers because athletes have traditionally been leaders. Within their communities, within their schools. And we have looked to athletes to lead. We expect athletes to lead.

  “I think the preparation for leadership is a critical piece for young athletes coming up. It’s one of the reasons why we have the RISE high school leadership program, and it is framed in terms of leadership development. Because we see the ability to have conversations and to live and exist in a diverse world as an act of leadership. On the other hand yes, we have to prepare them to take a stand, to believe in the things that they think are important, to better reflect and understand who they are and understand and celebrate their differences and similarities with others. That is certainly a critical piece. But we simultaneously need to prepare them for the pushback, as you put it. What happens when people resist, or don’t agree with the stand that you’re taking?

  “One way that we prepare our student athletes is with education. If you are going to take a stand, do you have all the facts around the issue? Do you have a sense of the history around the issue? Do you know what has taken place before you? Do you know others who have acted or stood up or spoken out within that space, and what are the lessons to be drawn from their actions? One of the things that came out as we chatted with athletes and had discussions is that they definitely see a need to be more educated as they begin to engage with those issues, and specifically this issue about race and race relations. They want to know what has happened, they want to know why we are at the point we are at, and they want to know what the next steps are from a best-practices standpoint.

  “Educating individuals before they make a stand is important, but so is simultaneously educating them on tactics. If you had to make a stand, what are some good ways to make that stand? What are strategic ways to make that stand? What are the most meaningful ways to make that stand? I think if athletes know that going in, they can be far more effective as well.

  “The other part is building a network that can support athletes who are willing to do some of this work. We aim to provide athletes who want to make a statement, who are taking these stands, with adequate support. Mentors who can help guide them. Civil rights and organizational leaders who can help them amplify their work and translate some of their protest into actions, tangible next steps. Colin Kaepernick has done a pretty decent job of not only speaking out but also donating money, and having conversations with colleges, high schools, and other community groups. That’s the work that should take place after the protest, after the acts of activism, that continues us moving toward a progressively better society.

  “A network that allows athletes, that supports athletes in making their statement and stand, and helps them translate that into tangible, effective next steps, I think is also an important step. And that’s what comes after they’ve spoken out. It is a better preparation to be educated beforehand, educated on strategies and the more effective ways of speaking out and taking action, but simultaneously be provided with some support, so that when you act, when you speak out, you can be protected from the pushback that might occur.”

  Have you, I asked MacIntosh, or how do you address or try to combat the societal ideology or notion of athletes as entertainers and not informed people who should have or who could have an educated opinion? This notion that you’re an athlete, which does not necessarily mean that you can also have an educated opinion, has been in the sports world for decades. Have you had discussions about this? Because that was some of the fallout that Colin Kaepernick was dealing with, that he is “pampered” and should just “shut up and play.” Why do we as a society have this belief that an athlete can be immensely talented in one area but not also have opinions that are informed?

  “Yes, some of that has come up. To address it we try to prepare athletes by providing them with information, by ensuring that they have support when they want to make some of these statements. Firstly, as we see in the case of Colin Kaepernick, he’d had several conversations with Dr. Harry Edwards. So when he spoke he was speaking from a very informed position. I think if athletes have support that can provide them with the facts, provide them with the strategies, that’s one step.

  “RISE started officially after about 2015. We began work with the high schools around the same time, so the winter of 2015 we did a pilot program with three high schools, and we’re currently doing a year-long pilot with seven high schools in Detroit, where we’re based, but we’re rapidly expanding. By the end of the year, we’re going to be having programming with high schools in at least five states. We’re already working with six colleges, and a number of grassroots and nonprofit organizations across the country. We’re rapidly expanding, but we’ve been doing this only about a year and a half.

  “I think our curriculum, the conversations we have with the students, these skills that we build, are things that should be in every classroom. They used to be a part of our society, and slowly for a number of reasons they’ve been eroded. Some of these things the curriculum addresses is critical thinking, empathy, trust building, influencing others, conflict resolution—those are tangible skills that people need to function effectively in every aspect of their life. Certainly we see that once people have these skills, they’re able to have conversations about race and race relations, but they’re also able to have conversations about other things. I would like to see these skills being taught across the country, and being mentored and modeled by athletes at all levels across the country.

  “Steve Ross was born and raised in Detroit, so our pilot programs have taken place in Detroit, and Detroit has gone through a real lean time over the past maybe five, six years. There was an economic decline, and a huge bankruptcy. He visited the city around the same time, and wanted to find some way to give back. Socioeconomic factors affect minorities in a more significant way than other factors. He wanted to find a way that he could contribute and give back to Detroit as well, which is why the program launched there.

  “Finally, he, like me and many others, believes in the power of sport, the power of sport to overcome. Athletes are leaders; we look to them. And also when we are on the field, if you’re on a team, you don’t see race, you don’t see color, you don’t see age, you don’t consider people’s background. You’re able to look past those things and see a teammate, a comrade.

  “That idea, that notion, that feeling that sport brings, is also something that Steve Ross hopes we can teach to others as we have these discussions about race and race relations. Can we look past the fact that we might come from different r
acial groups or ethnicities or countries or backgrounds, and see the similarities that we have? That we are human beings who want to love, who need compassion, who have a great potential if we put our minds together, and can work in productive ways?”

  5

  More Than Just a Game

  Sometimes the End Justifies the Means

  Looking at the support Colin Kaepernick has received from the sports world, the leagues, and his fans, it is clear that many people agree with his protest. Most of the backlash he has faced has to do with how he is protesting. Meanwhile, others may not agree with his protest because he is an athlete, and as such he should stick to sports and entertaining his fans. There is a part of our society that will never accept that sports is more than just entertainment. For many fans, sports is a means of escape. They escape the routine of their daily life by going to a game, or watching sports on TV. They do not want to have socioeconomic or political discussions that affect them on a daily basis enter the sports arena.

  We will never change everyone, but I believe we can educate society about the role that athletes have played and can play in implementing change. Then I think slowly the notion of sports solely as entertainment will change. However, change does not happen without discomfort. It is the discomfort of protest that makes it newsworthy. It is this discomfort that creates a discourse and enables people with differing points of view to come together to discuss it and hopefully create change, or at the very least shine a light on the issues we are passionate about, that we think are unjust. It is precisely this feeling of discomfort that made me certain I had to do something about my incident with the police. When I look at the incidents of police misconduct or of unarmed men being shot and killed by law enforcement, in only the last few years, it makes me uncomfortable.

  Despite repeated, often videotaped instances of violence against black Americans by people sworn to protect them, it is disturbingly apparent that few outside the black community want to accept what seems unquestionable: African Americans are disproportionately targeted due to systematic and institutionalized biases within the government and the police force. These biases often cost black Americans their lives. Yet America still questions the necessity of the Black Lives Matter movement. Somehow America still ponders—despite incident after incident—why there is so much distrust and public outrage at the daily injustices that occur, disproportionally, to people of color.

  The thirteen-month US Justice Department investigation into the Chicago Police Department, conducted in January 2017, pointed to “a police department with a legacy of corruption and abuse.” The inquiry comes “as the department grapples with skyrocketing violence in Chicago, where murders are at a 20-year high, and a deep lack of trust among the city’s residents.” The 161-page investigation then laid out a list of unchecked aggressions: “an officer pointing a gun at teenagers on bicycles suspected of trespassing; officers using a Taser on an unarmed, naked 65-year-old woman with mental illness; officers purposely dropping off young gang members in rival territory.” The report found that officers often used excessive force against minorities and that their actions were “practically condoned by supervisors, who rarely questioned their actions.”1

  This investigation is only the latest conducted by the Justice Department into the police departments of Chicago and Baltimore, which have been besieged by violence and tension between the police and the public. In August 2016, the New York Times described an earlier Justice Department report, which found that “the Baltimore Police Department for years has hounded black residents who make up most of the city’s population, systematically stopping, searching and arresting them, often with little provocation or rationale.” The article that followed laid out a list of mostly unarmed black men and women (such as Sandra Bland) who were killed by the police either on the street or died while they were in police custody.

  According to the Times, “investigations examined a slew of potentially unconstitutional practices, including excessive force and discriminatory traffic stops within the Baltimore Police Department. Among them: Black residents account for roughly eighty-four percent of stops, though they represent just sixty-three percent of the city’s population.”

  “In one telling anecdote from the report,” the Times article continued, “a [Baltimore Police Department] shift commander provided officers with boilerplate language on how to write up trespassing arrest reports of people found near housing projects. The template contained an automatic description of the arrestee: ‘A BLACK MALE.’”

  Because of social media and our twenty-four-hour news cycle, we are all too familiar with many of the victims. Within the last three years there has been an alarming number of African Americans killed at the hands of law enforcement. Perhaps the most shocking is the one that started the Black Lives Matter movement: the chokehold death of Eric Garner in 2014 in Staten Island. Garner was approached by police for selling loose cigarettes. When he told police that he was tired of being harassed, the officers went to arrest him. While he was being restrained by four police officers, Garner repeated “I can’t breathe” eleven times while lying facedown on the sidewalk until he lost consciousness. Garner died an hour later at the hospital. The incident was filmed, and the video shared around the world for weeks. The subsequent outrage incited public rallies and riots. By December 2014, there were at least fifty nationwide protests against police brutality. In July 2015, an out-of-court settlement was reached. The City of New York would pay $5.9 million to Garner’s family.

  In Baltimore in 2015, Freddie Gray was arrested for possessing what the police alleged was an illegal switchblade. While being taken to the police station, Gray was found with his neck broken, still handcuffed and shackled in the police van. Gray’s death threw Baltimore into turmoil and incited large protests and the worst riots the city had seen in decades. Despite the public outcry, prosecutors dropped the remaining charges and all convictions against Baltimore police officers in Gray’s death.

  Philando Castile’s death on July 6, 2016, is perhaps the most harrowing. Castile was fatally shot by a Minnesota police officer, after being pulled over in Falcon Heights. Castile was driving with his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds. After being asked for his license and registration, Castile told the officer he was licensed to carry a weapon and had one in the car. The officer told him not to move. As Castile was putting his hands back up, the officer shot him four times.

  During the incident, Reynolds streamed a live video on Facebook. It shows Castile bleeding and dying. Her four-year-old daughter was in the car during the encounter. This incident followed another police shooting incident that same week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, involving another black man, Alton Sterling. Sterling was tackled by police officers outside a store for selling CDs. He was then shot seven times and killed as two cops held him down on the ground. His death was also recorded, and the video was shared around the world via social media. News of his death incited protests and deadly police ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

  On September 16, 2016, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Terence Crutcher was on his way home when his car stalled. The police arrived shortly after responding to a call about a vehicle blocking traffic. Crutcher is captured on video walking toward his disabled vehicle with his hands raised, while Officer Betty Jo Shelby follows with her gun drawn. Moments after Crutcher reaches his vehicle, Officer Shelby fires her gun and kills him. While Crutcher is seen walking toward his car with his hands up, an officer remarks “this looks like a bad guy,” but Crutcher, who was unarmed, had not committed any crime, resisted in any way, or given any indication that the officers had anything to fear from him. Aside from the fact that he was a large black man. The incident was also recorded and posted worldwide on social media. The shooting led to riots in Tulsa.

  The Times article states, “The Supreme Court has given police officers wide latitude in how they can use deadly force, which makes prosecuting them difficult, even in the killing of unarmed people. For the Justice Department to charg
e an officer with a federal crime, the bar is even higher. Prosecutors must show that the officer willfully violated someone’s civil rights. State and federal investigators cleared the officer who killed twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland. Rice was playing with a plastic BB gun in the park when he was shot and killed by police.”

  I can come up with no other explanation when I look at these incidents, and the ensuing “blistering” Justice Department reports, than they happen in part because of discriminatory practices and implicit bias (why else would officers react negatively to Crutcher on sight?), and also because of a lack of training and sensitivity on the part of police officers in certain communities.

  Before all the video accounts of these tragic deaths, America was starting to think that discrimination had gone away, that it was no longer an issue. It is 2014, people thought, and we have a two-term black president. We are living in a “postracial” America; these types of things do not happen anymore. Then video after video started surfacing of police shootings of African American men, many literally running away, yet still getting shot. The public outcry was that it is getting worse. But the reality is, it is not getting worse, it’s getting taped and shared and publicized. Because of social media, these images are being reposted, and retweeted, and are reaching people worldwide in moments.

  It is important to understand that racism never went away, nor racial profiling, nor unconstitutional practices that target specific demographics, like stop-and-frisk practices, mass incarceration of certain demographics, the use of excessive force by the police, and a lack of accountability. I don’t think racism and discrimination will ever go away until we create change in several areas, and one of them is in police conduct. This is a cause I am passionate about, and I will speak up and advocate for more oversight, even if it makes America and the media uncomfortable.