Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: what sports have taught me about race in America

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Sports is one of the few areas in which Americans of all races can talk to each other. Right now, it may be the country’s best hope for meaningful dialogue

As the Guardian’s series on race and sports starts today – and we mark two years since Colin Kaepernick first knelt during the national anthem – I am reminded that whenever an NBA player comes close to shattering one of my dusty old records, eager journalists contact me to ask how I feel. Here’s how I feel: At the time I set those records – most points scored, most blocked shots, most MVP awards, blah, blah, blah – I celebrated them because they confirmed that all my hard work and discipline since childhood was effective in me achieving my goal of becoming the best possible athlete.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
(front right) attends the
Cleveland Summit
alongside other prominent
black athletes,
such as Muhammad Ali,
in 1967.
Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

But that wasn’t my only goal. The even greater significance those records had to me then, and has to me even more now, is in providing a platform to keep the discussion of social inequalities – whether racial, gender-related, or economic – alive and vibrant so that we may come together as a nation and fix them. Historically, that has been the greatness of the American spirit: we don’t flinch at identifying our own faults and using our moral fortitude and ingenuity to become a better nation. In honoring that spirit, I pay tribute to two of my most important mentors, UCLA coach John Wooden and Muhammad Ali. It is Ali’s voice I often hear in my head: “When you saw me in the boxing ring fighting, it wasn’t just so I could beat my opponent. My fighting had a purpose. I had to be successful in order to get people to listen to the things I had to say.” All sports records will inevitably be broken, but the day after they are, the world won’t have changed. But every day you speak up about injustice, the next day the world may be just a little better for someone.

Sports is the most popular form of entertainment, with Americans spending about $56bn on sports events last year, compared to about $11bn on movies. Seventy-two percent of 18- to 29-year-olds consider themselves sports fans, as do a majority of those older. This level of popularity has made sports more than just entertainment, it’s also part of our national identity, a source of inspiration for personal achievement, and a means to teach our children valuable lessons about teamwork and social ethics. For African Americans, sports has all those values – but it also has some extra implications.

For people of color, professional sports has always been a mirror of America’s attitude toward race: as long as black players were restricted from taking the field, then the rest of black Americans would never truly be considered equal, meaning they would not be given equal educational or employment opportunities. Even after they were permitted to play, sports has been the public face of America, not what we sentimentally profess to believe when waving flags on the Fourth of July, but of our actual daily behavior. That is why whatever happens in sports regarding race, plays out on the national stage. Right now, sports may be the best hope for change regarding racial disparity because it has the best chance of informing white Americans of that disparity and motivating them to act.

The problem is that this is not the message that those who profit from disparity want the public to hear. They attempt to silence voices of dissent in sports today just as they have throughout my lifetime and before. And that attempt is always disguised as an appeal to patriotism. They use the flag the way a magician uses a cape: to misdirect the audience from the manipulation. Poof! No racism here, folks.

To white America, the history of US sports is a rising graph of remarkable achievements of physical and mental strength. To black America, it’s that, but is also a consistent timeline of attempts to silence the voices of African Americans. In 1964, Ali’s refusal to submit to the draft during the Vietnam War on the grounds that “my conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people” caused him to be sentenced to five years in prison, fined $10,000, and banned from boxing years. He gave up millions of dollars and faced prison to speak his truth. In 1971, his conviction was overturned by the US Supreme Court in an 8–0 decision, but the damage had already been done.

During the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood on the podium and raised their gloved fists in the air during the national anthem. As a result, they were kicked off the team and sent back to the US where they were ostracized in the press and received death threats. But many black Americans felt pride that their own anger and frustration had been expressed out loud on an international stage. Carlos later said that it was not a black power salute, but a “human rights salute”. Smith said, “We were concerned about the lack of black assistant coaches. About how Muhammad Ali got stripped of his title. About the lack of access to good housing and our kids not being able to attend the top colleges.”

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1982, during his career with the Los Angeles Lakers. 
Focus On Sport/Getty Images

That same year, Aretha Franklin sang the national anthem at the Democratic National Convention and her performance was widely criticized in the press as “disgraceful,” “objectional,” “nerve shattering”. Editorials routinely decried “soul music” and referred to her in an insulting way as a “soul sister”. Wrote one angry reader, “‘Soul’ has its place – where, I’m not sure – but certainly not in the performance of our country’s anthem.” Even her magnificent voice was too black for the national anthem and had to be silenced.

In 2016, Colin Kaepernick’s passive protest against racial injustice, the simple act of kneeling during the national anthem, ignited a firestorm of support and condemnation. Other players from other sports joined his non-verbal protest. Kaepernick himself was punished, and his NFL career appears to be over after he was blackballed by teams.

The story continues. This month several NFL players kneeled or raised their fists during the national anthem, which prompted a tweet from President Trump, “Numerous players, from different teams, wanted to show their ‘outrage’ at something that most of them are unable to define.” Trump – the pampered Great White Hope of One-Percenters, who has never known a day without wealth – tried to silence black men by telling the world that they didn’t understand their own outrage. The national shame in this timeline isn’t the insult to the national anthem but the insult to the nation’s ideals that 50 years after Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists in Mexico City, not that much has changed. Despite the hundreds of studies and statistics and experts’ reports that confirm systemic racism is rampant in America – hindering education, employment, health, and life expectancy – we’re still trying to convince some people that the Earth is round.

Over the years, I have participated in some of these protests. In 1967, when I was only 20, I was the youngest member of the Cleveland Summit, a gathering of black athletes tasked with determining the sincerity of Ali’s claim of being a conscientious objector. In 1968, a few months after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr, I had been invited to play on the Olympic men’s basketball team. I was torn because I knew that joining the team would signal that I supported the way people of color were being treated in America – which I didn’t. But not joining the team could look like I didn’t love America – which I did. Instead, I chose to teach kids in New York City how to play basketball and why they should stay in school. My decision not to play resulted in hate mail calling me, among other things, “an ungrateful nigger”. That word, “ungrateful,” is the key to understanding what angers those who are so incensed at players’ protests. They want black athletes to be grateful that they’ve been given a seat at the table and to therefore ignore their brothers and sisters who have little hope of achieving that kind of success.

That success of some black athletes has a dark side for African Americans. Some see sports as a path for their children to escape the endless cycle of poverty. Parents pour all their energy into training and grooming their child to become a professional athlete, sometimes at the expense of their academic education. Yet, the odds of success are so slim that they are doing more damage to their child’s future. Even those who make it to the pros usually have a short career: the average in the NFL is 3.3 years, and in the NBA 4.8 years – and most don’t earn enough from those short careers to retire on. We can’t promote professional sports as a real hope any more than we can endorse the lottery as a career strategy. That’s why athletes are so motivated to speak out about the unequal opportunities that leave people desperate to cling to the hope of even a distant longshot.

I love sports. I love to see an athlete perform a physical feat so amazing that I marvel at what we are capable of. I love to see teams work together, to act selflessly in pursuit of a greater goal than individual glory. Sports energizes me and makes me hopeful about humanity.

But I am even more energized and hopeful when I see those same athletes speak out against injustices because I know that in doing so, they are risking the careers that they spent their whole lives working towards. Their willingness to risk everything in order to give voice to the powerless – despite all efforts to silence them – makes me proud as an athlete and as an American. As Mark Twain once said, “[T]rue patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.” Athletes who speak out are proclaiming their loyalty to a constitution that demands equality and inclusiveness, not to the government officials who try to undermine those ideals by silencing its critics.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is an American icon, legendary NBA champion and recipient of the 2016 Presidential Medal of Freedom. His latest book  Becoming Kareem - Growing Up On and Off the Court   is his first memoir for young readers and details his most influential mentors.