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The NBA players went on strike, refusing to
play scheduled basketball games to protest the police
shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last week.
Blake, who remains paralyzed from the waist down, was shot
seven times in the back at point-blank range while the
officer held him by his tee-shirt.
The players finally had enough after George
Floyd was killed by an officer who knelt on his neck for
over eight minutes in Minneapolis, police killed Breonna
Taylor in her own bedroom in Louisville, and numerous other
unarmed black men and women died at the hands of law
enforcement. Ironically, a young white teen armed with an
AR-15 was able to walk past hordes of police officers while
apparently trying to surrender after killing two protestors
and wounding another in the Blake shooting aftermath.
The NBA players found solidarity with
athletes and teams from the WNBA, Major League Baseball, NHL
hockey, professional tennis and MLS soccer, who also
implemented a work shortage.
The result?
Slogans, tee-shirts, and pro-social justice
public announcement statements were not enough. Today’s
athletes, more high-profile and earning more money for
themselves and their owners than ever before - and more
unified – were able to use their collective status to bring
awareness to police brutality and effect tangible change.
The players’ actions gained a commitment from
their employers to use every team-owned arena as a polling
place. The deal will ensure a safe space to cast votes in
the November election amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The
negotiations also produced a “social justice coalition” of
players, coaches, and owners to “promote civic engagement
and advocate for meaningful police and criminal justice
reform.”
Using the NBA as a model, how might others
use influence to bring awareness to systemic racism and help
usher real change?
Certainly, high profile professional athletes
have real power, as Ann Killion recently pointed out in the
San Francisco Chronicle. “They have a voice. They have
platforms. They have access to people with enormous wealth
and influence,” she wrote.
Like the NBA, it’s time for others to use
those same devices to effect change.
Anthea Butler, associate professor of religious studies and
Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and
co-organizer Kevin Gannon,
director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and
Learning at Grand View University,
have
organized a work stoppage and virtual, public teach-in on
police violence and racism, for example. Participating
scholars will “pause their normal teaching and
administrative duties on September 8 and 9” in the wake of
the Blake shooting and the killings of Breonna Taylor and
George Floyd, according to Colleen Flaherty for Inside
Higher Ed.
What if teachers, school leaders, coaches and
public school administrators who serve as examples of public
education’s value and payoff used their real power and went
on strike to highlight systematic racism throughout society,
including an unequal education system?
Or, what if students of poverty and color and
parents refused to show up for school to drive real change
in education?
One of the underlying causes of the current
racial divide is the lack of knowledge about blacks and
other people of color.
What if parents refused to send their
children to school until schools stopped teaching a
white-dominant culture only? Until they are no longer mis-taught
because books are mostly written and designed by those who
leave the black experience out of the curriculum?
What if we boycotted all elementary, high
schools, and universities until they make African-American
history and social justice courses mandatory rather than a
mere obligatory aside during February?
We have allowed others, who have mastered the
art of deception, to profit from our perpetual ignorance and
generational lack of information.
Sadly, our educational system is not the only
institution that keeps us tethered to systemic racism’s
status quo. Too many of our churches also only present us
with “what European males say.” Authentic scholarship,
secular or religious, needs also to include the black
perspective, female interpretation, and the vantage of other
marginalized and excluded groups.
Yes, the Black Lives Matter movement and the
continuing death of unarmed blacks by police are slowly
changing the church. Some churches are beginning to take
their financial resources out of mainstream banks and
depositing them in black financial institutions. That is
noble.
But, what if pastors, church members, and
those who serve as a positive voice in congregations and
community, would stay home until the church portrays Jesus
as the Bible depicts him. Borrow the words of Brenda Salter
McNeil, “as a radical figure – a man of color – flipping
tables in the temple to point out economic injustice and to
agitate for the dignified treatment of lepers and
prostitutes.” Christ sought to upend corrupt social
hierarchies, not to reinforce them or look the other way,
Salter McNeil says.
What if the Black Church, instead of using
the white-supremacist oriented Sunday School and Vacation
Bible School curricula, incorporated Black History, Black
Literature, Black Children’s Literature, and Black Scholars
in their ethical teaching?
What if the Black Church utilized black
women’s voices, positive youth voices, and culture, black
experience, the black value system, or the African origins
of scripture?
Protests are wonderful. However, Black people
and institutions must use our influence and our minds to
effect real change.
Contact Rev. Donald Perryman, D.Min, at
drdlperryman@centerofhopebaptist.org |
