It was not long ago the COVID-19 pandemic was the biggest problem in our country.
People dying from this harmful disease, families unable to see their loved ones, businesses closed, no school and no sports, just to name a few issues citizens have faced.
That quickly changed after Derek Chauvin, a now-former Minneapolis police officer, murdered George Floyd, an unarmed black man, kneeling on his neck for nearly nine minutes, Monday.
Floyd begged for his life, but Chauvin, nor the three other officers on scene showed mercy.
It was not until Friday when Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.
A CNN reporter was arrested for doing his job before Chauvin was locked up.
Professional athletes have joined forces with people from across the world taking part in peaceful protests standing up for Floyd.
Meanwhile, anarchists are highjacking these protests, looting stores, destroying property and burning things to the ground.
There’s a fine line between doing what’s right and what’s wrong, especially during such uneasy and restless times in our country.
Four years ago when former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem, he was standing up for something too.
People can feel a certain way about what he did, but maybe Kaepernick was onto something.
Police officers have plowed through crowds of protesters and shot rubber bullets at journalists reporting the news. And that is just some of the uncanny actions taken by police officers recently.
Not all police officers are bad. And not all black people are criminals.
But just because someone wears a badge does not mean they have the right to do the heinous acts being caught on television and by cell phones.
Actor Will Smith tweeted last week, “Racism is not getting worse, it’s getting filmed,” to which University of Pittsburgh head men’s basketball coach Jeff Capel replied, “Been going on WAY to long! Now EVERYONE can see it!!! This is not something that’s made up. It’s very real. And it’s EVERYWHERE!!!”
Former NBA player Stephen Jackson, ‘twin’ of George Floyd, delivered a powerful message saying, “You can’t tell me when that man had his knee on my brother’s neck taking his life away with his hand in his pocket that that smirk on his face didn’t say ‘I’m protected.’ You can’t tell me that he didn’t feel that it was his duty to murder my brother and that he knew he was going to get away with it. You can’t tell me that wasn’t the look in his face. We’ve seen it so many times, so many times and we see it right in our face and we don’t get no justice. What happened to common sense?”
And it’s not just black athletes and celebrities standing up for Floyd and the injustices that took place Monday and are still occurring.
Joe Burrow, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 NFL draft tweeted, “The black community needs our help. They have been unheard for far too long. Open your ears, listen, and speak. This isn’t politics. This is human rights.”
University of Kentucky head men’s basketball coach John Calipari, who went to Moon Area High School and played basketball at Clarion University, tweeted, “Whether you’re talking George Floyd or a number of other incidents that have happened in our country and in our backyard, I’m sick because I cannot believe one human being could treat another human being the way we’ve seen with some of these injustices.”
No person should be treated the way George Floyd was.
Ahmaud Arbery, another unarmed black man, was murdered in Georgia taking a jog. The white father and son charged for the crime claimed self defense.
It was another racially motivated hate crime.
Things need to change and they need to change in a hurry.
Now, it is easy for me to sit here and voice my opinion and be upset with what is going on in the world because I am a 34-year-old white man, who lives in a small town and does not have to worry about what might happen when my kids go outside to play because of their skin color.
Then again, I live in a place where people still fly Confederate flags.
If anyone reading this is wondering why the sports guy is writing about race, and news-related events happening across the country, it’s because they matter to me.
So before we are quick to judge an athlete or someone taking a knee at a sporting event, maybe we can use our platforms, do something positive in our communities and stand up for something bigger — change.
