July 7, 2021 • 42 mins
Jemele Hill is an award-winning sports journalist, a writer at The Atlantic, and host of the Unbothered podcast. She was a co-host of SportsCenter on ESPN and a Senior Correspondent and Columnist for their website, The Undefeated, before leaving the network in 2018. Dr. Kendi and Hill have a thought-provoking conversation about overhauling sports – from ownership to fandom to media – in the pursuit of an antiracist future. For further reading, resources, and a transcript of this episode visit https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/be-antiracist-with-ibram-x-kendi.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. I grew up playing sports baseball, bowling, volleyball, football,
floor hockey, dodgeball, track basketball. Loved the battle, the competition,
(00:37):
the trash talking, and I hated losing. Days were lost
when I lost big games. I played baseball and basketball
the longest. Growing up in Queens, New York and Manassas, Virginia,
I dreamed of playing in the NBA, duking it out
with the next Michael Jordan as the next John Starks.
(00:58):
But as high school graduation approached, I knew the dream
would remain a dream. When I arrived at college in
the fall of two thousand on a backup plan sports journalism.
I never imagined writing about racism. I planned on sticking
to sports. I'm Abramax Kendy, and this is b anti racist.
(01:28):
I worked tirelessly to jump start my sports journalism career.
I took unpaid internships at notable papers, took after hours
jobs to make ends meet. I became the sports editor
at my college newspaper. Shortly after my junior year, I
landed my first paid internship at the Mobile Register. The
(01:48):
year was two thousand and three, four decades after President
Kennedy had ordered the National Guard to desegregate the University
of Alabama this afternoon. Following a series of threats and
defined statements, the Presidence of Alabama National Guardsman was required
on the University of Alabama to carry out the final
(02:11):
and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of
the Northern District of Alabama. That order called for the
admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happened
to have been born Nigro. Now there was a big
sports story on campus. The university had considered hiring Sylvester
(02:34):
Crum to become the first blackhead football coach at the
institution and in the entire Southeastern Conference. Crum was born
in Tuscaloosa and was one of the first black football
players at Alabama, playing for a legendary coach, Bear Bryant.
When Croom played for the crincon Tide the University of
(02:55):
Alabama's football team, they won all but two of their games,
won three consecutive conference championships, and were the nineteen seventy
three National champions. He went on to have a career
as an assistant coach in the NFL, but the University
of Alabama snub crewm in favor of a white coach
(03:16):
with significantly less coaching experience. CREWM said at the time,
black guys are good enough to play for them, good
enough to be assisting coaches, and not good enough to
be in the positions of decision making and the positions
of high financial reward. At the Mobile Register that summer,
(03:36):
I wondered what some of the top high school football
recruits in the region thought. It was two thousand and
three and the SEC still had never had a blackhead
football coach. I was surprised when every single recruit I
interviewed said they'd prefer to play for a blackhead football coach.
Readers of the Mobile Register were surprised when we reported
(03:58):
the news. I served as a vehicle for these black
athletes to speak their truth. They didn't just shut up
and play. They inspired me as I learned firsthand the
interplay of race and sport. When I returned to campus
in the fall of two thousand and three, I decided
to double major in African American studies. I came to
(04:21):
see how much black athletes and other athletes of color
were treated as commodities whose points on the square board
mattered more than their lives. Policies and decisions concerning the
upcoming Tokyo Olympics have offered painful reminders of this fact.
The International Olympic Committee bar Kary Richardson, the fastest woman
(04:44):
in the United States, from participating in the one hundred
meter dash, for legally smoking marijuana after learning about the
passing of her mother. USA Track and Field recently announced
that cc Telfer, a black trans runner, will not be
able to participate in the four hundred meter hurdle despite
(05:04):
meeting the performance requirements for the event. The policing of
black women's femininity did not end there. Christine Umboma and
Beatrice Massilingi, two sister gender sprinters from Namibia, have been
ruled ineligible to compete in the women's four hundred meter
due to natural high testosterone levels. The International Swimming Federation
(05:31):
banned the use of soul caps designed for black hair
on the grounds that the caps did not follow the
so called natural form of the head. At the same
time that these racist, misogynistic, and transphobic policies were enforced,
the IOC has ruled that athletes could not stage protests
(05:51):
against them during events or metal ceremonies. Thinking back on
it now, I got into writing by writing about sports,
But it was sports that pushed me into writing about racism,
and the rest is history. Welcome to Be Anti Racist
(06:15):
in Action podcasts where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle,
and abolish racism, how to save humanity from the divisiveness
of racist ideas and the destructiveness of racist power and policy,
how to free humanity through the unity of anti racist
ideas and the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy.
(06:38):
On Be Anti Racist, we discuss how to make the
impossible possible and how to bring into being what modern
humans have never known, a just an equitable world. You ready,
let's roll. There's a huge bass to people who believe
(07:10):
that sports and politics should mix, But in this case,
they've always mixed together. I mean, think about it, Jackie Robinson,
Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell. We've always had these different intersections
between sports, race, politics, and gender, and usually people that
object to that intersection because they don't like the viewpoint
or opinion being expressed. So it's not really about the
(07:31):
fact that they're mixing. They're just mixing in a way
that makes them uncomfortable. Similar to how athletes are told
to shut up and dribble, many journalists of color are
told to shut up and write. There is perhaps no
one better versed in this reality than Jamal Hill. Jamal
went from being the only black woman sports columnist in
all of North America to co hosting her own show,
(07:54):
an anchoring sports center on ESPN, but everything changed in
twenty seventeen. On Monday, the ESPN host went off on
social media, criticizing the President and going as far as
calling Trump or white supremacist. Trump went out to Jamal,
as he did a series of other black women journalists
during his presidency. His tweets said the following, with Jamille
(08:16):
Hill at the mic, It's no wonder ESPN ratings have tanked,
In fact, tanks so badly it is the talk of
the industry. She ultimately left ESPN. Jamal Hill is now
the host of a podcast with the illest name, Unbothered.
She's also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. We sat
down recently to discuss how important it is to overhaul
(08:38):
sports from ownership to fandom to media if we want
to achieve an anti racist future. Jamale, I'm so glad
we're able to get some time to chet. It's a
pleasure definitely for me. To be here as well. Me
and my husband actually are in the process of reading.
Just so you know, I first want to ask you
about I know you wrote about it in The Atlantic,
(09:01):
but your reaction to what's been happening with Naomi. You
wrote about it being a larger struggle within sport into
if you could just share with your thoughts about that,
naomeal Socta. You know, it's a really complicated issue, her
mental health, of course being the first major component of
this conversation for people who maybe don't follow tennis. What
(09:24):
she said about the anxiety depression, I think the scope
of it was new, But Naomi has always intimated that
she struggles in terms of public speaking, which is always
interesting to me because every time she does speak, it's
always eloquent, thoughtful, direct, It's everything that you want as
a journalist when you cover an athlete of her magnitude.
(09:46):
She was very eloquent on this subject. But yet we
have to remember she's twenty three years old. Her career
is like literally just taking off. She's the highest pay
female athlete in all of sports. This comes with a
lot of pressure, a lot of expectations, and at the
same time as she is coming into her own As
a tennis player, she has the double duty of having
the unfortunate task of unseating her iconic hero, which is
(10:10):
Serena Williams. I think back to twenty eighteen when she
beat Serena in the US Open for her first major title,
and the crowd booed her, and she revealed in the
last couple of weeks that that was a major source
of the depression and anxiety that she's felt. So there's
one part of this as a mental health conversation, and
it's our responsibility as sports journalists to put this into context.
(10:31):
Then the other part becomes about athletes in their own agency,
and given Naomi's financial capabilities, the leverage that she has
both socially culturally in her sport, I think that saying
that she not only would have to face a fifteen
thousand dollars fine, but she also would face maybe being
excluded from future majors if she did not adhere to
(10:54):
their media policy was one of the dumbest things I've
ever seen in sports, especially considering this as someone who
is a jewel in your sport, who continues to drive
popularity and drive eyeballs and viewership and fans, both long
standing fans and new casual fans who just really like her,
(11:14):
and you alienate her. If you're an official with the
French Open, what's better this week to have Naomi Osaka
in the tournament or out of it? I'm gonna say
in it. So this was just a really bad play
on their part. Consider that playing time and money have
always been two things that they have used to try
to quote unquote keep athletes a line, especially black athletes
(11:35):
and especially black women. Her withdrawing from that tournament said
a lot about who she is as a person and
a lot about for that matter, that she values her
piece more than performance. So good for Naomi Osaka. I
think as a media member, we do really have to
think about our approach. You are two words that I
wish somebody would have told a French Open official pool
(11:58):
reporter use them all the time in the White House,
could have used one with her. Maybe that would have
been a very viable solution. Indeed, and one of my
first reactions when I heard the response that basically these athletes,
as I knew across sports a more or less required
to talk to the media was why aren't our elected
(12:20):
officials required to talk to the media. Why is it
that we have athletes who are required to talk to
me and people rally around it and say, oh, it's important,
it's part of the game, it's part of the sport.
But we have elected officials, even during a pandemic, can
go months without talking to the media. How does that happen?
(12:40):
It tells a lot about our priorities. Right. What people
have to understand is that there is a I know
this is no shock to you, but there's money involved
when it comes to these press conferences. Of course, there
is a logistical component to this that is workable for
both athlete organization or sport they represent and journalists. The
(13:01):
other part is that sometimes if you're watching a press conference,
I want people to pay attention to the banner that
it's usually behind the athlete that's there talking. Or look
at the table. You usually see a company's name, right,
You usually see some kind of positive right right here.
That space ain't free and those okay, so that that
company or that business or that sport can get prime
(13:24):
time placement. Because if it gets pn US to run
a clip of this press conference, guess what you get
to see? That it's sponsored by lumberjack, okay, like you
see it, and then it's growing and expanding the reach
of the sport. And the way that you do that
is that you make the athletes accessible. You get them
written about, you getting them talked about. For journalists, they're
very useful. I've spent twenty years now in sports journalism,
(13:46):
and so I think what you brought up is a
very important point. I think there's some debate or some
discussion at least about whether or not making the mandatory.
It's perhaps sending the wrong message, but it does say
something that we expect our professional athletes to answer to
their performances, but we do not expect take Cruise to
answer why he's often can't cooled while his constituents are
(14:09):
literally freezing to death. The government, which we pay with
our tax dollars, is able to avoid our scrutiny as
well as our questions, and we're unable as a citizens
ry to hold them accountable other than through journalists. So
there's something kind of bizarre about that culture, especially when
you consider that other entertainers and sports is entertainment, they
(14:33):
don't have to make themselves available in the same way.
How much of that do you think has to do
with sport, particularly the major moneymaking sports, being so racialized,
so we're really talking about black men and women oftentimes
and requiring on mandating them to do something. Of course,
(14:54):
as you know, many journalists and writers who've written at
the intersection of race and sport have compared the relationship
between the way society understands and looks at black athletes
and the way in which they have looked at other
people they want to control and dominate. There's this almost
inability to imagine a Naomi or soccer with agency for
(15:17):
so many people. Yeah, black athletes in particular, the majority
of their careers are covered by white people, white men
who are creating narratives about them, who are culturally disconnected
from them, who do not understand some of the other
racialized issues around sports and can see and report on
them through that context. We've had this conversation for my
(15:41):
entire career about the utterly embarrassing lack of representation in
sports media. To give people an idea, even now twenty
twenty one, roughly eighty percent of sports reporters in the
US are white men. It's the same when it comes
to executive leadership at sports media organizations. It's the same.
When it comes to columnists, it's the same, up and
(16:03):
down the line. I was a sports columnist in daily
newspapers in two thousand and five. That was my last
year as the columnists had a daily newspaper, and at
that moment, I was the only black female sports columnist
in North America, the only one out of four hundred
and five daily newspapers that is shameful. Shameful is not
(16:24):
even the word I want to use a customer, but
I want to impress you, so I won't use it.
And so that's pretty bad, and not a whole lot
is changed. I think back to Colin Kaepernick when he
began his protest in twenty sixteen, and look at how
that was covered. Now, the person who originally wrote about
why Colin Kaepernick was doing it and what he was
(16:44):
doing was a black reporter who noticed that he was
sitting down on the bench. And after that you saw
a media narrative, mostly again framed by white reporters and
analysts and commentators, that was so disconnected to what Colin
Kaepernick was actually talking about. You know, I didn't see
(17:05):
a whole lot of people in sports commentary delving deeper
into the issues of police brutality or trying to understand
the message that Colin Kaefernick was trying to send. And certainly,
once the conversation got hijacked and became about patriotism, a
modern people in sports did not resist that false narrative,
(17:25):
and as a result, or at least contributing factor, I
should say, Colin Kaefernick got cast as a villain pretty early,
pretty quickly, and with resounding damnation. This is the danger
when you have a media that is as white as
sports media still is. When these narratives are formed about
black athletes, they tend to stick. And when it comes
(17:46):
to women of color, and it comes to black women,
much like it is in the rest of our society,
there's an rature, there's a depiction. I mean, I think
about how often and how regularly that Serena Williams throughout
her career was picked it as aggressive, confrontational. She has
a competitive fire that is on the same level of
(18:07):
Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, many of the great athletes
of our time. But a lot of times she was
called rude or impolite or doing something that was offensive
to tennis and not to mention the body shaving that
Serena went through in her career. So Naomi Otaka is
getting a firsthand look at this firsthand look, and they're
(18:28):
shocked that she would feel uneasy and anxious when she's
around the same media that is very quick to paint
Serena Williams as some kind of monstrous villain. I think
this generation of athletes has a new sense of empowerment
and a more heightened sense of agency, and that social
media has allowed them to directly reach who they want
(18:50):
to reach. They want to create and craft their own narratives.
They're tired of depending on the media to do it,
and certainly to do it responsibly. Hey, what's up for everybody?
This is Jamel Hill and you're listening to be anti
racist with doctor Ebram X Kidney. I'm happy we're talking
(19:19):
about this heightened agency to use that term of athletes
today because even you've written about just how to think
about ways to transform sports. I can remember back to
a piece that I read calling for black athletes to
return to HBCUs and being an alum of Florida Agricultural
(19:42):
and Mechanical University, no doubt, no doubt, and you know,
of course, knowing that in the nineteen sixties, nineteen fifties,
many of these top athletes, particularly from the state of Florida,
particularly in football, were going to FAM you just as
in Louisiana they were going to Grambling. But now, of
(20:03):
course they're going to UF and LSU and as a result,
the money is following them or money is being made.
If you can talk about potentially high profile and highly
recruited black athletes returning to HBCUs and what that would
do in terms of the changing of sports and even
the changing of this country. Well, I think it's important
(20:23):
that we start the conversation realizing what they used to
think amateur athletics, which is when it started, that's what
it actually was. It was amateur what they thought it
was going to be, And nobody thought it was going
to become a billion dollar enterprise, not even HBCUs. Yeah, HBCUs,
I don't think they not only couldn't anticipate what all
(20:45):
college football, college basketball was about to be, they also
to some degree didn't think that white people would ever
come up with the idea of integrating because why would
they right, why would they ever think that they would
considering the treatment that they had already faced, and the
whole reason we have HBCUs being because white institutions were
(21:07):
not allowing black people in them. It was our only
resource in terms of higher education. Of course, once you
saw black athletes trickling in slowly to these predominantly white institutions,
people point to when I believe it was Alabama play
usc Bear Bryant, and I can't remember his name, but
I think it was a black running back. It was
(21:28):
either running back or a quarterback who just demolished Alabama.
And after that moment, Bear Bryant understood, if we are
to survive as Alabama, we have to have black athletes,
and so they aggressively began to shepherd all the black athletes.
You know, this is another side of our conversation I'm
sure you've had about the negative aspects of integration. You know,
(21:52):
we wanted equality, but I don't think we wanted to
be robbed of our greatest resources. And that's what happened.
And those great resources were these incredibly skilled, talented, highly
capable college athletes that suddenly stopped going to grand blame
Sam You, Hampton and Howard and began to go to
(22:13):
white institutions because they of course had more financial resources
than HBCUs, as they had from the very beginning, they
had more to offer. And you look up in twenty
twenty one and black athletes have built an empire that
is worth billions off their free labors, and thinking about
how that money has been used to create a level
(22:37):
of financial success at these universities that people never thought
was possible. I wondered what would happen if some of
our best resources, being the athletic community that we have,
begun to take their talents to HBCUs and what that
might look like for these colleges and universities who certainly
(22:58):
have been able to stay afloat. Some are thriving. But
when you think about the fact that the biggest HBCU
athletic budget might be about thirty or forty million dollars,
and the fact that Texas' athletic budget is two hundred million,
Clipson has a fifty five million dollars locker room, a
locker room. Alabama has a sixty five million dollar locker
(23:20):
room that comes with a barber shop. Okay, this is
what is being built because of the success of black athletes,
and so thinking about the kind of endowments that HBCUs
have and what that looks like compared to a dude
or North Carolina. It's not even close. I mean, Howard
probably is the biggest endowment out of HBCUs, and it
(23:43):
probably wouldn't even be in the top one fifty or
perdomin million white institution. It's not even a billion. No,
But yeah, I don't think it would. I would taking
a while stamp, but I was like, I'm guessing it wasn't.
And so the sports economy has been major for higher education,
and it feels like, especially with the political climate in
(24:03):
this country, the grievance climate in this country, and how
racially polar I think things are, that it definitely feels
more so than I've seen probably in my career, that
more black high school athletes are considering HBCUs. But there's
a lot of us that don't know that HBCU history,
are not as well versed. And I get it. I
(24:25):
understand why the players want to go to Texas A
and M or the University of Texas rather than Prayer
View because the facilities are completely different. But I do
think that at this time in our community that it's
important that they really consider HBCUs, especially when they start
to think about how much money that they are willingly
making for other schools. So it was just an important
(24:49):
issue I wanted to raise and the first one to
think about it. But I thought that laying it out
there would be something that people could really critically think about,
critically thinking about it even more, especially when we think
of SEC schools and ACC schools like Clemson and Florida State,
and how these universities private and public are sitting in
(25:14):
states where currently black people are facing this wave of
voters depression as our people of color more broadly, and
you have many of the constituents voters in those states
electing officials who are supporting those types of policies, just
as they themselves are fans of these teams, and so
(25:38):
on the one hand, they root for black people when
they run, but then of course they're simultaneously running away
from the rights of those very people. And this is normal, right,
This is I mean, this is so normal. And then
I mean to break it down even more, Jamil, one
of those very campuses, you have football coaches, basketball coaches
(26:00):
who get fired if they do not recruit the top
black athletes. And right down the road you have partment
chairs in deans and provosts who don't have a mandate
to recruit the top black professors can say, oh, they
just didn't want to come here. I tried, but the
pool wasn't diverse. And so I think, to me, these
(26:23):
just glaring contradictions show themselves most obviously in the Southeast,
where we have the greatest populations of black people, but
then also you have the greatest assaults on the lives
of black people, particularly at an electoral level right now.
It reminds me of I don't know who to specifically
(26:43):
give credit for, but it's a phrase that I've heard
a few times, and especially in the last few years,
is if only white people love black people as much
as they love black culture. In this country, we don't
produce a whole lot anymore, but the one thing that
we still produce is pop culture is entertainment, right, and
I would put sports in that crock pot, and our fixation,
(27:07):
our dependency on sports is pretty over the top, and
it is constantly both a contradiction utter hypocrisy that on
one end you will hear and see many in leadership
who constantly undermine the progress of black people. At the
(27:29):
same time, do everything possible to make sure black production
in athletics is unfettered, is untethered, is unbothered, if you will.
And a hope of mine is that athletes and sports
figures who have the ability to do so will use
that dependency to help progress along. I'm thinking of the
(27:53):
young man whose name hopefully will come to me, who
I believe is that Mississippi State, if I'm not mistaken.
Last year he was. And as we're having this conversation
in this country, this quote unquote racial reckoning. So I'm
not sure what was actually reckon it, but all right,
i'll call iterate the reckoning. But the Mississippi state flag,
(28:14):
which diod for over a hundred years, had a Confederate emblem,
and this particular athlete, who happened to be the leading
rusher in the SEC tweeted that he wasn't gonna represent
the state anymore. And I don't know if that meant
he was gonna leave. I don't know what it meant
he was gonna do unless they changed that flag. And
the governor of Mississippi, who had been playing both sides
(28:35):
against the middle of him and in halln not really
wanted to change anything. What do you know, within weeks
it changed, and they made a collective decision to redesign
a new state flag and also to ban Confederate symbol,
and also to move forward in what had been a
conversation that had been going absolutely nowhere not at the
(28:59):
same time. And I don't know how many people are
aware of this, but there's a water crisis that was
going on in Jackson, Mississippi. Yeah, and Jackson that was
on the level of Flint, and this same governor, Governor
Reeves pretty much told Jackson get in it on your
own right, abandoned people about a issue of clean water,
(29:20):
and was very obstinate, insulting, racist in his response to Jackson.
But he didn't want to lose that running back, so
he changed that flag. And we have seen this going
back to slavery, as everything often does. Predie Douglas even
talked about this before witnessing the role of sport and
about how those who were black athletes during slavery, being
(29:43):
in boxing or wrestling or other forms of sports, that
they would do entertainment for the white masses, how they
made sure to segregate them and treat them differently than
to create a level of division in the ranks just
based off treatment. Even then, those were those natural hypocrisies
of loving to see the brilliance of black people, but
(30:04):
at the same time never wanted to see the progress
of black people, not on a social or political level.
What I like about what's happening now is I don't
think today's athletes are in a go along to get
along mood. We saw it in the bubble when they
were prepared to stop playing after what happened to Jacob Blake. Yes,
(30:26):
and we see the w NBA and one of the
greatest acts of political courage in sports. They changed the
whole complexion of the political landscape when they got Kelly
Lefler up out of Georgia. Right, their boss who signs paychecks.
This is a team owner, right, This is not just
some executive. This is somebody who is writing their paychecks.
(30:47):
And they said, you know what, Reverend Raphael Warnock, that's
what we got. So that is what I'm saying, is like,
I think that there is a level of resilience and
just downright progressive stubbornness that have swept through these athletes.
They're not having it anymore. They're just not for those
(31:08):
of us who are witnessing the increased amount of activism
and resistance from athletes and who are inspired by them,
inspired by what those NBA players did, inspired by Colin,
and they're interested in supporting the efforts to end the
(31:29):
exploitation of black athletes in college sports, who are interested
in figuring out ways to prevent certain members of the
media from demeaning and creating racist narratives. You know, people
who want to do something and want to play a part.
Where can they begin? What should they be thinking? Well,
I do think that sports fans have to demand more.
(31:51):
They can't always be on the athletes. I think a
great mistake that was made with Colin Kaepernick is that
the other players didn't rally to support him, not soon enough.
You know, whether you agreed with his method or if
you have some issues, okay, that's fine. But the general
idea that your career could be ruined, that you could
(32:13):
be blackballed because you were taking a stands for humanity
is something that should not have set right with any
player in the NFL. I think they missed the opportunity there,
and I also think for a lot of fans to
support a Colin Kaepernick. There is an opportunity there for them.
You vote which you are remote. You know I love football,
(32:33):
college ampro. You know I love sports as a whole.
But in some cases we got to ask ourselves to
what extent because the owners and those gatekeepers in these
sports are going to use your love of something, something
you think you can't live without, against you. And so
I do think that the fans and viewers can be
very key in holding these leads accountable. The challenge also
(32:58):
is definitely on the media because what happens, especially now
that we have a shrinking media landscape, you have networks
that are in business arrangements with all the professional sports.
The ability to hold these leagues accountable is often non existent.
And as long as they're kind of able to get
(33:19):
away with all of this, they're going to do it.
I mean college sports is a really, really good example
in that years from now, when this house of cards
has fallen, if older people are displaying the even younger people, Yeah,
we used to have a college system where the athlete
made billions of dollars that never got paid. They don't
look at us like we're crazy. I think it's incumbent
(33:40):
on us to keep critically asking these questions and not
creating systems where they're able to outright exploit people. The
NFL when you look at how far things have come,
and they are not perfect by any stretch when it
comes to head injuries and other advancements that have been
made and protecting their health and even on the money,
(34:01):
and so they still need to have fully guaranteed contracts
for everybody. That sport has come a long way, and
part of the reason they came a long way is
because I think both the players and the fans begin
to hold the league accountable. So I think those partnerships work.
I want to see fans side more with players because
(34:22):
I don't think fans really understand that this is symbolic
of the working relationship in this country. Like we're a
country that has been able to make a lot of
employment advancements because of unions. You don't side with the
people who own Microsoft, you side with the workers. Part
of that racial dynamic that you've talked about is that, unfortunately,
(34:45):
because the most dominant in terms of popularity sports in
America are dominated by black athletes, that mainstream fans are
very quick to side with the billionaires over the players,
not understanding that they have far more in common with
them than they do some billionaire writing a check from
this guy. So sports fans have to get out of
(35:06):
this mindset of being so pro owner and pro sports socialism,
as I like to call it. You know, being upset
that a player is making one hundred million dollars, but
you're not upset that an owner is giving you to
pay for a ten billion dollars stadium. I don't understand it.
So yeah, I mean, I think there's a level of
accountability there that sometimes it's missing, and that's what I
(35:26):
think fans and players can bring to the tables, you know,
making sure that these systems are not allowed to go unchecked. Jamel,
I'm sure you've seen more and more athletes who expressed
interest in being owners or who actually are becoming owners.
And this makes me think about and correct me if
(35:47):
I'm wrong. The last time I believe it was the
NBA was in a lockout. Some of the players, like
I think Kevin Durant and others began organizing games in
high school gyms or college gyms, and then they became
talk of the players almost creating and running their own league,
and then there was all this blowback in which people
(36:08):
were like, oh, the players can't run their own league,
or there were all these demeaning words about the players.
I mean, I know you mentioned about the house of
cards falling in terms of college sports, but when it
comes to professional sports, do you think that that could
potentially be the future, and you think that could be
an anti racist future. It would be a great anti
racist future. But that's difficult. That's a difficult subject to
(36:31):
tackle because I do think it's so deeply entrenched the
way the system works now that it would be hard
to convince the players to do it, even though they could.
You know, overall, in sports, there is not the realization
that you would think among players them understanding you are
the product, you have all to say. So we're seeing
(36:54):
signs of that increasing awareness, but it's still increasing awareness
within a system that was only designed to exploit them. Yeah,
that's true. The NBA is a great example because I think,
especially with what Lebron James has come to me just
as a total humanitarian, it has changed all the power
dynamics in that sport. And I know that there's probably
(37:16):
a lot of NBA owners who don't appreciate it, but
I think the players have just become so much more savvay.
You know, they went back to work on the promise
that NBA owners would open their arenas as voting centers. Okay,
that's why they went back after Jacob Blake. That was
a big component and as you see, it was very
important that they did that. But I think they can
(37:37):
get even bolder, even more aggressive, not just demanding things
but creating things. I do think ownership is the next
path for the modern player, and it being all about ownership,
not just the ownership of a team, but ownership of
their talent, ownership of their stories. They're trying to own
every aspect of who they are because they're coming to
(38:01):
realize that they themselves are the Fortune five hundred company,
and so they're trying to make sure that they treat
themselves as such. But I think the way that things are,
it would just be hard to imagine. It's certainly not impossible,
but as always, you're going to need a courageous soul
or souls in this case to really try to make
(38:23):
something like that happen. I mean, just because it hasn't happened,
or maybe we can't imagine. It doesn't mean that it won't,
but I think we are definitely getting to a point
where at least the possibility of that will become stronger
as athletes continue to develop their own agency. It's so
much more about their ability that they're able to control
(38:45):
and draw revenue from than there was before. That they
have single handedly been able to put themselves in positions
to be empires onto themselves so collectively, I like to
see what they do with it, because they may get
to that point where they say, you know what, we
don't really need the NBA anymore, you know, maybe we
do our own things. Yes, I suspect that one of
(39:08):
the ways that which these new entities could become successful,
as if we as fans, those of us who are
viewing as you said, you vote with your vote, and
we support that, and we support players functioning as owners,
workers functioning as owners, just as we hopefully would support
(39:29):
it in society in general. Thank you so much, Jamal.
It's always an honor and pleasure to talk to you
and learn from you and to even dream as we
were towards the end of this podcast, Well, thank you.
I appreciate being here and having this conversation with you.
I always feel smarter when I talk to you, just
because by listening to you. So I really do appreciate
(39:51):
not just this podcast and this conversations, but just like
all the amazing thoughtful work that you're doing. Thank you
so much. Speaking with Jamal Hill really helped clarify for
me that every sport speed is a race beed in
a way. Just take this one story that broke around
(40:13):
the time Jamel and I spoke. The National Football League
has agreed to end a practice so called race norming,
in connection with a landmark concussion settle move. Some former
players say that the controversial race norming practice assumed that
black players start out with lower cognitive functioning than that
was used to deny the black players equal money in
(40:37):
the brain injury claims the one billion dollar brain injury
lawsuit for repetitive concussive injuries. Black professional athletes are viewed
too often by ownership, the media, and fans as what
journalists William Rodin calls forty million dollars slaves. When athletes
of color reclaimed their narrative like Naomia Socca or enter
(40:59):
ownership positions like Lebron James, they are treated almost as
runaways from a system designed to exploit them. Racism in
sports is a microcosm of racism in the world, and
anti racist solutions applied in sports can provide a model
for anti racist solutions in society. Jamel and I talked
(41:20):
a lot about power. Who is in the owner's box,
who is making the rules in teams, who is in
the press box, who is shaping the stories and narratives.
Change won't come unless the power structure in society in
sports shifts. At its core, the racial struggle is a
power struggle between people being racist and people being anti racist.
(41:45):
Let Us be Anti Racist, Be Anti Racist is a
production of Pushing Industries in Our Heart Media. It is
written and hosted by doctor ibramx Kindy and produced by
Alexandra Garriton with associate producer Britney Brown. Our engineer has
(42:06):
been Talliday, Our editor is Julia Barton and I'll show
under Sashimathias. Our executive producers are All the Time Wilad
and Mio Lobel Funny. Thanks to Tammy Winn and doctor
Heather Sandford at the Center for Anti Racist Research at
Boston University for all of their help at Pushkin thanks
to Heather Fame, Carli Migliori, John Schnars, and Jacob Wiseberg.
You can find doctor Kendy on Twitter at d r
(42:28):
Abram and on Instagram at Abram XK. You can find
Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin pods, and you
can sign up for our news that are at pushkin
dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
our heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you'd like
to listen
Pushkin. I grew up playing sports baseball, bowling, volleyball, football,
floor hockey, dodgeball, track basketball. Loved the battle, the competition,
(00:37):
the trash talking, and I hated losing. Days were lost
when I lost big games. I played baseball and basketball
the longest. Growing up in Queens, New York and Manassas, Virginia,
I dreamed of playing in the NBA, duking it out
with the next Michael Jordan as the next John Starks.
(00:58):
But as high school graduation approached, I knew the dream
would remain a dream. When I arrived at college in
the fall of two thousand on a backup plan sports journalism.
I never imagined writing about racism. I planned on sticking
to sports. I'm Abramax Kendy, and this is b anti racist.
(01:28):
I worked tirelessly to jump start my sports journalism career.
I took unpaid internships at notable papers, took after hours
jobs to make ends meet. I became the sports editor
at my college newspaper. Shortly after my junior year, I
landed my first paid internship at the Mobile Register. The
(01:48):
year was two thousand and three, four decades after President
Kennedy had ordered the National Guard to desegregate the University
of Alabama this afternoon. Following a series of threats and
defined statements, the Presidence of Alabama National Guardsman was required
on the University of Alabama to carry out the final
(02:11):
and unequivocal order of the United States District Court of
the Northern District of Alabama. That order called for the
admission of two clearly qualified young Alabama residents who happened
to have been born Nigro. Now there was a big
sports story on campus. The university had considered hiring Sylvester
(02:34):
Crum to become the first blackhead football coach at the
institution and in the entire Southeastern Conference. Crum was born
in Tuscaloosa and was one of the first black football
players at Alabama, playing for a legendary coach, Bear Bryant.
When Croom played for the crincon Tide the University of
(02:55):
Alabama's football team, they won all but two of their games,
won three consecutive conference championships, and were the nineteen seventy
three National champions. He went on to have a career
as an assistant coach in the NFL, but the University
of Alabama snub crewm in favor of a white coach
(03:16):
with significantly less coaching experience. CREWM said at the time,
black guys are good enough to play for them, good
enough to be assisting coaches, and not good enough to
be in the positions of decision making and the positions
of high financial reward. At the Mobile Register that summer,
(03:36):
I wondered what some of the top high school football
recruits in the region thought. It was two thousand and
three and the SEC still had never had a blackhead
football coach. I was surprised when every single recruit I
interviewed said they'd prefer to play for a blackhead football coach.
Readers of the Mobile Register were surprised when we reported
(03:58):
the news. I served as a vehicle for these black
athletes to speak their truth. They didn't just shut up
and play. They inspired me as I learned firsthand the
interplay of race and sport. When I returned to campus
in the fall of two thousand and three, I decided
to double major in African American studies. I came to
(04:21):
see how much black athletes and other athletes of color
were treated as commodities whose points on the square board
mattered more than their lives. Policies and decisions concerning the
upcoming Tokyo Olympics have offered painful reminders of this fact.
The International Olympic Committee bar Kary Richardson, the fastest woman
(04:44):
in the United States, from participating in the one hundred
meter dash, for legally smoking marijuana after learning about the
passing of her mother. USA Track and Field recently announced
that cc Telfer, a black trans runner, will not be
able to participate in the four hundred meter hurdle despite
(05:04):
meeting the performance requirements for the event. The policing of
black women's femininity did not end there. Christine Umboma and
Beatrice Massilingi, two sister gender sprinters from Namibia, have been
ruled ineligible to compete in the women's four hundred meter
due to natural high testosterone levels. The International Swimming Federation
(05:31):
banned the use of soul caps designed for black hair
on the grounds that the caps did not follow the
so called natural form of the head. At the same
time that these racist, misogynistic, and transphobic policies were enforced,
the IOC has ruled that athletes could not stage protests
(05:51):
against them during events or metal ceremonies. Thinking back on
it now, I got into writing by writing about sports,
But it was sports that pushed me into writing about racism,
and the rest is history. Welcome to Be Anti Racist
(06:15):
in Action podcasts where we discuss how to diagnose, dismantle,
and abolish racism, how to save humanity from the divisiveness
of racist ideas and the destructiveness of racist power and policy,
how to free humanity through the unity of anti racist
ideas and the constructiveness of anti racist power and policy.
(06:38):
On Be Anti Racist, we discuss how to make the
impossible possible and how to bring into being what modern
humans have never known, a just an equitable world. You ready,
let's roll. There's a huge bass to people who believe
(07:10):
that sports and politics should mix, But in this case,
they've always mixed together. I mean, think about it, Jackie Robinson,
Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell. We've always had these different intersections
between sports, race, politics, and gender, and usually people that
object to that intersection because they don't like the viewpoint
or opinion being expressed. So it's not really about the
(07:31):
fact that they're mixing. They're just mixing in a way
that makes them uncomfortable. Similar to how athletes are told
to shut up and dribble, many journalists of color are
told to shut up and write. There is perhaps no
one better versed in this reality than Jamal Hill. Jamal
went from being the only black woman sports columnist in
all of North America to co hosting her own show,
(07:54):
an anchoring sports center on ESPN, but everything changed in
twenty seventeen. On Monday, the ESPN host went off on
social media, criticizing the President and going as far as
calling Trump or white supremacist. Trump went out to Jamal,
as he did a series of other black women journalists
during his presidency. His tweets said the following, with Jamille
(08:16):
Hill at the mic, It's no wonder ESPN ratings have tanked,
In fact, tanks so badly it is the talk of
the industry. She ultimately left ESPN. Jamal Hill is now
the host of a podcast with the illest name, Unbothered.
She's also a contributing writer at The Atlantic. We sat
down recently to discuss how important it is to overhaul
(08:38):
sports from ownership to fandom to media if we want
to achieve an anti racist future. Jamale, I'm so glad
we're able to get some time to chet. It's a
pleasure definitely for me. To be here as well. Me
and my husband actually are in the process of reading.
Just so you know, I first want to ask you
about I know you wrote about it in The Atlantic,
(09:01):
but your reaction to what's been happening with Naomi. You
wrote about it being a larger struggle within sport into
if you could just share with your thoughts about that,
naomeal Socta. You know, it's a really complicated issue, her
mental health, of course being the first major component of
this conversation for people who maybe don't follow tennis. What
(09:24):
she said about the anxiety depression, I think the scope
of it was new, But Naomi has always intimated that
she struggles in terms of public speaking, which is always
interesting to me because every time she does speak, it's
always eloquent, thoughtful, direct, It's everything that you want as
a journalist when you cover an athlete of her magnitude.
(09:46):
She was very eloquent on this subject. But yet we
have to remember she's twenty three years old. Her career
is like literally just taking off. She's the highest pay
female athlete in all of sports. This comes with a
lot of pressure, a lot of expectations, and at the
same time as she is coming into her own As
a tennis player, she has the double duty of having
the unfortunate task of unseating her iconic hero, which is
(10:10):
Serena Williams. I think back to twenty eighteen when she
beat Serena in the US Open for her first major title,
and the crowd booed her, and she revealed in the
last couple of weeks that that was a major source
of the depression and anxiety that she's felt. So there's
one part of this as a mental health conversation, and
it's our responsibility as sports journalists to put this into context.
(10:31):
Then the other part becomes about athletes in their own agency,
and given Naomi's financial capabilities, the leverage that she has
both socially culturally in her sport, I think that saying
that she not only would have to face a fifteen
thousand dollars fine, but she also would face maybe being
excluded from future majors if she did not adhere to
(10:54):
their media policy was one of the dumbest things I've
ever seen in sports, especially considering this as someone who
is a jewel in your sport, who continues to drive
popularity and drive eyeballs and viewership and fans, both long
standing fans and new casual fans who just really like her,
(11:14):
and you alienate her. If you're an official with the
French Open, what's better this week to have Naomi Osaka
in the tournament or out of it? I'm gonna say
in it. So this was just a really bad play
on their part. Consider that playing time and money have
always been two things that they have used to try
to quote unquote keep athletes a line, especially black athletes
(11:35):
and especially black women. Her withdrawing from that tournament said
a lot about who she is as a person and
a lot about for that matter, that she values her
piece more than performance. So good for Naomi Osaka. I
think as a media member, we do really have to
think about our approach. You are two words that I
wish somebody would have told a French Open official pool
(11:58):
reporter use them all the time in the White House,
could have used one with her. Maybe that would have
been a very viable solution. Indeed, and one of my
first reactions when I heard the response that basically these athletes,
as I knew across sports a more or less required
to talk to the media was why aren't our elected
(12:20):
officials required to talk to the media. Why is it
that we have athletes who are required to talk to
me and people rally around it and say, oh, it's important,
it's part of the game, it's part of the sport.
But we have elected officials, even during a pandemic, can
go months without talking to the media. How does that happen?
(12:40):
It tells a lot about our priorities. Right. What people
have to understand is that there is a I know
this is no shock to you, but there's money involved
when it comes to these press conferences. Of course, there
is a logistical component to this that is workable for
both athlete organization or sport they represent and journalists. The
(13:01):
other part is that sometimes if you're watching a press conference,
I want people to pay attention to the banner that
it's usually behind the athlete that's there talking. Or look
at the table. You usually see a company's name, right,
You usually see some kind of positive right right here.
That space ain't free and those okay, so that that
company or that business or that sport can get prime
(13:24):
time placement. Because if it gets pn US to run
a clip of this press conference, guess what you get
to see? That it's sponsored by lumberjack, okay, like you
see it, and then it's growing and expanding the reach
of the sport. And the way that you do that
is that you make the athletes accessible. You get them
written about, you getting them talked about. For journalists, they're
very useful. I've spent twenty years now in sports journalism,
(13:46):
and so I think what you brought up is a
very important point. I think there's some debate or some
discussion at least about whether or not making the mandatory.
It's perhaps sending the wrong message, but it does say
something that we expect our professional athletes to answer to
their performances, but we do not expect take Cruise to
answer why he's often can't cooled while his constituents are
(14:09):
literally freezing to death. The government, which we pay with
our tax dollars, is able to avoid our scrutiny as
well as our questions, and we're unable as a citizens
ry to hold them accountable other than through journalists. So
there's something kind of bizarre about that culture, especially when
you consider that other entertainers and sports is entertainment, they
(14:33):
don't have to make themselves available in the same way.
How much of that do you think has to do
with sport, particularly the major moneymaking sports, being so racialized,
so we're really talking about black men and women oftentimes
and requiring on mandating them to do something. Of course,
(14:54):
as you know, many journalists and writers who've written at
the intersection of race and sport have compared the relationship
between the way society understands and looks at black athletes
and the way in which they have looked at other
people they want to control and dominate. There's this almost
inability to imagine a Naomi or soccer with agency for
(15:17):
so many people. Yeah, black athletes in particular, the majority
of their careers are covered by white people, white men
who are creating narratives about them, who are culturally disconnected
from them, who do not understand some of the other
racialized issues around sports and can see and report on
them through that context. We've had this conversation for my
(15:41):
entire career about the utterly embarrassing lack of representation in
sports media. To give people an idea, even now twenty
twenty one, roughly eighty percent of sports reporters in the
US are white men. It's the same when it comes
to executive leadership at sports media organizations. It's the same.
When it comes to columnists, it's the same, up and
(16:03):
down the line. I was a sports columnist in daily
newspapers in two thousand and five. That was my last
year as the columnists had a daily newspaper, and at
that moment, I was the only black female sports columnist
in North America, the only one out of four hundred
and five daily newspapers that is shameful. Shameful is not
(16:24):
even the word I want to use a customer, but
I want to impress you, so I won't use it.
And so that's pretty bad, and not a whole lot
is changed. I think back to Colin Kaepernick when he
began his protest in twenty sixteen, and look at how
that was covered. Now, the person who originally wrote about
why Colin Kaepernick was doing it and what he was
(16:44):
doing was a black reporter who noticed that he was
sitting down on the bench. And after that you saw
a media narrative, mostly again framed by white reporters and
analysts and commentators, that was so disconnected to what Colin
Kaepernick was actually talking about. You know, I didn't see
(17:05):
a whole lot of people in sports commentary delving deeper
into the issues of police brutality or trying to understand
the message that Colin Kaefernick was trying to send. And certainly,
once the conversation got hijacked and became about patriotism, a
modern people in sports did not resist that false narrative,
(17:25):
and as a result, or at least contributing factor, I
should say, Colin Kaefernick got cast as a villain pretty early,
pretty quickly, and with resounding damnation. This is the danger
when you have a media that is as white as
sports media still is. When these narratives are formed about
black athletes, they tend to stick. And when it comes
(17:46):
to women of color, and it comes to black women,
much like it is in the rest of our society,
there's an rature, there's a depiction. I mean, I think
about how often and how regularly that Serena Williams throughout
her career was picked it as aggressive, confrontational. She has
a competitive fire that is on the same level of
(18:07):
Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, many of the great athletes
of our time. But a lot of times she was
called rude or impolite or doing something that was offensive
to tennis and not to mention the body shaving that
Serena went through in her career. So Naomi Otaka is
getting a firsthand look at this firsthand look, and they're
(18:28):
shocked that she would feel uneasy and anxious when she's
around the same media that is very quick to paint
Serena Williams as some kind of monstrous villain. I think
this generation of athletes has a new sense of empowerment
and a more heightened sense of agency, and that social
media has allowed them to directly reach who they want
(18:50):
to reach. They want to create and craft their own narratives.
They're tired of depending on the media to do it,
and certainly to do it responsibly. Hey, what's up for everybody?
This is Jamel Hill and you're listening to be anti
racist with doctor Ebram X Kidney. I'm happy we're talking
(19:19):
about this heightened agency to use that term of athletes
today because even you've written about just how to think
about ways to transform sports. I can remember back to
a piece that I read calling for black athletes to
return to HBCUs and being an alum of Florida Agricultural
(19:42):
and Mechanical University, no doubt, no doubt, and you know,
of course, knowing that in the nineteen sixties, nineteen fifties,
many of these top athletes, particularly from the state of Florida,
particularly in football, were going to FAM you just as
in Louisiana they were going to Grambling. But now, of
(20:03):
course they're going to UF and LSU and as a result,
the money is following them or money is being made.
If you can talk about potentially high profile and highly
recruited black athletes returning to HBCUs and what that would
do in terms of the changing of sports and even
the changing of this country. Well, I think it's important
(20:23):
that we start the conversation realizing what they used to
think amateur athletics, which is when it started, that's what
it actually was. It was amateur what they thought it
was going to be, And nobody thought it was going
to become a billion dollar enterprise, not even HBCUs. Yeah, HBCUs,
I don't think they not only couldn't anticipate what all
(20:45):
college football, college basketball was about to be, they also
to some degree didn't think that white people would ever
come up with the idea of integrating because why would
they right, why would they ever think that they would
considering the treatment that they had already faced, and the
whole reason we have HBCUs being because white institutions were
(21:07):
not allowing black people in them. It was our only
resource in terms of higher education. Of course, once you
saw black athletes trickling in slowly to these predominantly white institutions,
people point to when I believe it was Alabama play
usc Bear Bryant, and I can't remember his name, but
I think it was a black running back. It was
(21:28):
either running back or a quarterback who just demolished Alabama.
And after that moment, Bear Bryant understood, if we are
to survive as Alabama, we have to have black athletes,
and so they aggressively began to shepherd all the black athletes.
You know, this is another side of our conversation I'm
sure you've had about the negative aspects of integration. You know,
(21:52):
we wanted equality, but I don't think we wanted to
be robbed of our greatest resources. And that's what happened.
And those great resources were these incredibly skilled, talented, highly
capable college athletes that suddenly stopped going to grand blame
Sam You, Hampton and Howard and began to go to
(22:13):
white institutions because they of course had more financial resources
than HBCUs, as they had from the very beginning, they
had more to offer. And you look up in twenty
twenty one and black athletes have built an empire that
is worth billions off their free labors, and thinking about
how that money has been used to create a level
(22:37):
of financial success at these universities that people never thought
was possible. I wondered what would happen if some of
our best resources, being the athletic community that we have,
begun to take their talents to HBCUs and what that
might look like for these colleges and universities who certainly
(22:58):
have been able to stay afloat. Some are thriving. But
when you think about the fact that the biggest HBCU
athletic budget might be about thirty or forty million dollars,
and the fact that Texas' athletic budget is two hundred million,
Clipson has a fifty five million dollars locker room, a
locker room. Alabama has a sixty five million dollar locker
(23:20):
room that comes with a barber shop. Okay, this is
what is being built because of the success of black athletes,
and so thinking about the kind of endowments that HBCUs
have and what that looks like compared to a dude
or North Carolina. It's not even close. I mean, Howard
probably is the biggest endowment out of HBCUs, and it
(23:43):
probably wouldn't even be in the top one fifty or
perdomin million white institution. It's not even a billion. No,
But yeah, I don't think it would. I would taking
a while stamp, but I was like, I'm guessing it wasn't.
And so the sports economy has been major for higher education,
and it feels like, especially with the political climate in
(24:03):
this country, the grievance climate in this country, and how
racially polar I think things are, that it definitely feels
more so than I've seen probably in my career, that
more black high school athletes are considering HBCUs. But there's
a lot of us that don't know that HBCU history,
are not as well versed. And I get it. I
(24:25):
understand why the players want to go to Texas A
and M or the University of Texas rather than Prayer
View because the facilities are completely different. But I do
think that at this time in our community that it's
important that they really consider HBCUs, especially when they start
to think about how much money that they are willingly
making for other schools. So it was just an important
(24:49):
issue I wanted to raise and the first one to
think about it. But I thought that laying it out
there would be something that people could really critically think about,
critically thinking about it even more, especially when we think
of SEC schools and ACC schools like Clemson and Florida State,
and how these universities private and public are sitting in
(25:14):
states where currently black people are facing this wave of
voters depression as our people of color more broadly, and
you have many of the constituents voters in those states
electing officials who are supporting those types of policies, just
as they themselves are fans of these teams, and so
(25:38):
on the one hand, they root for black people when
they run, but then of course they're simultaneously running away
from the rights of those very people. And this is normal, right,
This is I mean, this is so normal. And then
I mean to break it down even more, Jamil, one
of those very campuses, you have football coaches, basketball coaches
(26:00):
who get fired if they do not recruit the top
black athletes. And right down the road you have partment
chairs in deans and provosts who don't have a mandate
to recruit the top black professors can say, oh, they
just didn't want to come here. I tried, but the
pool wasn't diverse. And so I think, to me, these
(26:23):
just glaring contradictions show themselves most obviously in the Southeast,
where we have the greatest populations of black people, but
then also you have the greatest assaults on the lives
of black people, particularly at an electoral level right now.
It reminds me of I don't know who to specifically
(26:43):
give credit for, but it's a phrase that I've heard
a few times, and especially in the last few years,
is if only white people love black people as much
as they love black culture. In this country, we don't
produce a whole lot anymore, but the one thing that
we still produce is pop culture is entertainment, right, and
I would put sports in that crock pot, and our fixation,
(27:07):
our dependency on sports is pretty over the top, and
it is constantly both a contradiction utter hypocrisy that on
one end you will hear and see many in leadership
who constantly undermine the progress of black people. At the
(27:29):
same time, do everything possible to make sure black production
in athletics is unfettered, is untethered, is unbothered, if you will.
And a hope of mine is that athletes and sports
figures who have the ability to do so will use
that dependency to help progress along. I'm thinking of the
(27:53):
young man whose name hopefully will come to me, who
I believe is that Mississippi State, if I'm not mistaken.
Last year he was. And as we're having this conversation
in this country, this quote unquote racial reckoning. So I'm
not sure what was actually reckon it, but all right,
i'll call iterate the reckoning. But the Mississippi state flag,
(28:14):
which diod for over a hundred years, had a Confederate emblem,
and this particular athlete, who happened to be the leading
rusher in the SEC tweeted that he wasn't gonna represent
the state anymore. And I don't know if that meant
he was gonna leave. I don't know what it meant
he was gonna do unless they changed that flag. And
the governor of Mississippi, who had been playing both sides
(28:35):
against the middle of him and in halln not really
wanted to change anything. What do you know, within weeks
it changed, and they made a collective decision to redesign
a new state flag and also to ban Confederate symbol,
and also to move forward in what had been a
conversation that had been going absolutely nowhere not at the
(28:59):
same time. And I don't know how many people are
aware of this, but there's a water crisis that was
going on in Jackson, Mississippi. Yeah, and Jackson that was
on the level of Flint, and this same governor, Governor
Reeves pretty much told Jackson get in it on your
own right, abandoned people about a issue of clean water,
(29:20):
and was very obstinate, insulting, racist in his response to Jackson.
But he didn't want to lose that running back, so
he changed that flag. And we have seen this going
back to slavery, as everything often does. Predie Douglas even
talked about this before witnessing the role of sport and
about how those who were black athletes during slavery, being
(29:43):
in boxing or wrestling or other forms of sports, that
they would do entertainment for the white masses, how they
made sure to segregate them and treat them differently than
to create a level of division in the ranks just
based off treatment. Even then, those were those natural hypocrisies
of loving to see the brilliance of black people, but
(30:04):
at the same time never wanted to see the progress
of black people, not on a social or political level.
What I like about what's happening now is I don't
think today's athletes are in a go along to get
along mood. We saw it in the bubble when they
were prepared to stop playing after what happened to Jacob Blake. Yes,
(30:26):
and we see the w NBA and one of the
greatest acts of political courage in sports. They changed the
whole complexion of the political landscape when they got Kelly
Lefler up out of Georgia. Right, their boss who signs paychecks.
This is a team owner, right, This is not just
some executive. This is somebody who is writing their paychecks.
(30:47):
And they said, you know what, Reverend Raphael Warnock, that's
what we got. So that is what I'm saying, is like,
I think that there is a level of resilience and
just downright progressive stubbornness that have swept through these athletes.
They're not having it anymore. They're just not for those
(31:08):
of us who are witnessing the increased amount of activism
and resistance from athletes and who are inspired by them,
inspired by what those NBA players did, inspired by Colin,
and they're interested in supporting the efforts to end the
(31:29):
exploitation of black athletes in college sports, who are interested
in figuring out ways to prevent certain members of the
media from demeaning and creating racist narratives. You know, people
who want to do something and want to play a part.
Where can they begin? What should they be thinking? Well,
I do think that sports fans have to demand more.
(31:51):
They can't always be on the athletes. I think a
great mistake that was made with Colin Kaepernick is that
the other players didn't rally to support him, not soon enough.
You know, whether you agreed with his method or if
you have some issues, okay, that's fine. But the general
idea that your career could be ruined, that you could
(32:13):
be blackballed because you were taking a stands for humanity
is something that should not have set right with any
player in the NFL. I think they missed the opportunity there,
and I also think for a lot of fans to
support a Colin Kaepernick. There is an opportunity there for them.
You vote which you are remote. You know I love football,
(32:33):
college ampro. You know I love sports as a whole.
But in some cases we got to ask ourselves to
what extent because the owners and those gatekeepers in these
sports are going to use your love of something, something
you think you can't live without, against you. And so
I do think that the fans and viewers can be
very key in holding these leads accountable. The challenge also
(32:58):
is definitely on the media because what happens, especially now
that we have a shrinking media landscape, you have networks
that are in business arrangements with all the professional sports.
The ability to hold these leagues accountable is often non existent.
And as long as they're kind of able to get
(33:19):
away with all of this, they're going to do it.
I mean college sports is a really, really good example
in that years from now, when this house of cards
has fallen, if older people are displaying the even younger people, Yeah,
we used to have a college system where the athlete
made billions of dollars that never got paid. They don't
look at us like we're crazy. I think it's incumbent
(33:40):
on us to keep critically asking these questions and not
creating systems where they're able to outright exploit people. The
NFL when you look at how far things have come,
and they are not perfect by any stretch when it
comes to head injuries and other advancements that have been
made and protecting their health and even on the money,
(34:01):
and so they still need to have fully guaranteed contracts
for everybody. That sport has come a long way, and
part of the reason they came a long way is
because I think both the players and the fans begin
to hold the league accountable. So I think those partnerships work.
I want to see fans side more with players because
(34:22):
I don't think fans really understand that this is symbolic
of the working relationship in this country. Like we're a
country that has been able to make a lot of
employment advancements because of unions. You don't side with the
people who own Microsoft, you side with the workers. Part
of that racial dynamic that you've talked about is that, unfortunately,
(34:45):
because the most dominant in terms of popularity sports in
America are dominated by black athletes, that mainstream fans are
very quick to side with the billionaires over the players,
not understanding that they have far more in common with
them than they do some billionaire writing a check from
this guy. So sports fans have to get out of
(35:06):
this mindset of being so pro owner and pro sports socialism,
as I like to call it. You know, being upset
that a player is making one hundred million dollars, but
you're not upset that an owner is giving you to
pay for a ten billion dollars stadium. I don't understand it.
So yeah, I mean, I think there's a level of
accountability there that sometimes it's missing, and that's what I
(35:26):
think fans and players can bring to the tables, you know,
making sure that these systems are not allowed to go unchecked. Jamel,
I'm sure you've seen more and more athletes who expressed
interest in being owners or who actually are becoming owners.
And this makes me think about and correct me if
(35:47):
I'm wrong. The last time I believe it was the
NBA was in a lockout. Some of the players, like
I think Kevin Durant and others began organizing games in
high school gyms or college gyms, and then they became
talk of the players almost creating and running their own league,
and then there was all this blowback in which people
(36:08):
were like, oh, the players can't run their own league,
or there were all these demeaning words about the players.
I mean, I know you mentioned about the house of
cards falling in terms of college sports, but when it
comes to professional sports, do you think that that could
potentially be the future, and you think that could be
an anti racist future. It would be a great anti
racist future. But that's difficult. That's a difficult subject to
(36:31):
tackle because I do think it's so deeply entrenched the
way the system works now that it would be hard
to convince the players to do it, even though they could.
You know, overall, in sports, there is not the realization
that you would think among players them understanding you are
the product, you have all to say. So we're seeing
(36:54):
signs of that increasing awareness, but it's still increasing awareness
within a system that was only designed to exploit them. Yeah,
that's true. The NBA is a great example because I think,
especially with what Lebron James has come to me just
as a total humanitarian, it has changed all the power
dynamics in that sport. And I know that there's probably
(37:16):
a lot of NBA owners who don't appreciate it, but
I think the players have just become so much more savvay.
You know, they went back to work on the promise
that NBA owners would open their arenas as voting centers. Okay,
that's why they went back after Jacob Blake. That was
a big component and as you see, it was very
important that they did that. But I think they can
(37:37):
get even bolder, even more aggressive, not just demanding things
but creating things. I do think ownership is the next
path for the modern player, and it being all about ownership,
not just the ownership of a team, but ownership of
their talent, ownership of their stories. They're trying to own
every aspect of who they are because they're coming to
(38:01):
realize that they themselves are the Fortune five hundred company,
and so they're trying to make sure that they treat
themselves as such. But I think the way that things are,
it would just be hard to imagine. It's certainly not impossible,
but as always, you're going to need a courageous soul
or souls in this case to really try to make
(38:23):
something like that happen. I mean, just because it hasn't happened,
or maybe we can't imagine. It doesn't mean that it won't,
but I think we are definitely getting to a point
where at least the possibility of that will become stronger
as athletes continue to develop their own agency. It's so
much more about their ability that they're able to control
(38:45):
and draw revenue from than there was before. That they
have single handedly been able to put themselves in positions
to be empires onto themselves so collectively, I like to
see what they do with it, because they may get
to that point where they say, you know what, we
don't really need the NBA anymore, you know, maybe we
do our own things. Yes, I suspect that one of
(39:08):
the ways that which these new entities could become successful,
as if we as fans, those of us who are
viewing as you said, you vote with your vote, and
we support that, and we support players functioning as owners,
workers functioning as owners, just as we hopefully would support
(39:29):
it in society in general. Thank you so much, Jamal.
It's always an honor and pleasure to talk to you
and learn from you and to even dream as we
were towards the end of this podcast, Well, thank you.
I appreciate being here and having this conversation with you.
I always feel smarter when I talk to you, just
because by listening to you. So I really do appreciate
(39:51):
not just this podcast and this conversations, but just like
all the amazing thoughtful work that you're doing. Thank you
so much. Speaking with Jamal Hill really helped clarify for
me that every sport speed is a race beed in
a way. Just take this one story that broke around
(40:13):
the time Jamel and I spoke. The National Football League
has agreed to end a practice so called race norming,
in connection with a landmark concussion settle move. Some former
players say that the controversial race norming practice assumed that
black players start out with lower cognitive functioning than that
was used to deny the black players equal money in
(40:37):
the brain injury claims the one billion dollar brain injury
lawsuit for repetitive concussive injuries. Black professional athletes are viewed
too often by ownership, the media, and fans as what
journalists William Rodin calls forty million dollars slaves. When athletes
of color reclaimed their narrative like Naomia Socca or enter
(40:59):
ownership positions like Lebron James, they are treated almost as
runaways from a system designed to exploit them. Racism in
sports is a microcosm of racism in the world, and
anti racist solutions applied in sports can provide a model
for anti racist solutions in society. Jamel and I talked
(41:20):
a lot about power. Who is in the owner's box,
who is making the rules in teams, who is in
the press box, who is shaping the stories and narratives.
Change won't come unless the power structure in society in
sports shifts. At its core, the racial struggle is a
power struggle between people being racist and people being anti racist.
(41:45):
Let Us be Anti Racist, Be Anti Racist is a
production of Pushing Industries in Our Heart Media. It is
written and hosted by doctor ibramx Kindy and produced by
Alexandra Garriton with associate producer Britney Brown. Our engineer has
(42:06):
been Talliday, Our editor is Julia Barton and I'll show
under Sashimathias. Our executive producers are All the Time Wilad
and Mio Lobel Funny. Thanks to Tammy Winn and doctor
Heather Sandford at the Center for Anti Racist Research at
Boston University for all of their help at Pushkin thanks
to Heather Fame, Carli Migliori, John Schnars, and Jacob Wiseberg.
You can find doctor Kendy on Twitter at d r
(42:28):
Abram and on Instagram at Abram XK. You can find
Pushkin on all social platforms at pushkin pods, and you
can sign up for our news that are at pushkin
dot fm. To find more Pushkin podcasts, listen on the
our heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you'd like
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