Holding Court

The return of the political athlete

- Howard Bryant

 

FOR ALL THE CLICHÉS about sudden death and there being no tomorrow, sports were always sup­ posed to be a substitute for reality, a place where Americans could fight for three hours and hug it out afterward. The newspapers used to call the sports pages the “toy department” for a reason. It was, after all, only a game.

But sports were always more than that for the black athlete. Sports was the place, at least ideal­istically, that fit the American Dream, where the scoreboard guaranteed fairness. Even that was an exaggeration, for when black athletes used their wealth and fame to exercise their full citizenship— as rich people do across the world—they were in­ evitably told to stick to sports.

A recent example came in February, when LeBron James appeared in a video discussing President Donald Trump on his multimedia site, Uninterrup­ ted. James, long the best basketball player in the world and increasingly an unflinching critic of Trump, said the president’s frequent, harmful com­ments were “laughable” and “scary.” Shortly after the segment went online, the demagogic Fox News host Laura Ingraham told James to “shut up and dribble.” Her response, so harsh and absolute—reminiscent of Trump saying football owners should “get that son of a bitch off the field” for kneeling during the national anthem— was a reminder: In theory, sports were where athletes were seen as most American, but in reality, the minute a black player spoke about the American condition with even a hint of dissidence, the white public believed it could revoke his license to speak up.