On Sunday in Germany, during a match in the top flight of that nation's pro soccer league, Marcus Thuram scored a goal. Before joining in the celebration with teammates, he strode to a spot and took a knee.
In Dortmund, at another Bundesliga match, winger Jadon Sancho scored a goal, then lifted his shirt to reveal a written message: "Justice for George Floyd."
In England, at a training session, the entire Liverpool team took a knee for Floyd.
Meanwhile, in America, buildings and automobiles burned and the crunch of broken glass and screams sundered the night.
In Europe, few told those players to "stick to sports," as they do in America when black athletes speak out on matters of social justice. Yet in Europe as in America, sport is politics. Players there have to deal with racist chants rather than the more direct words in America, but both are lacerating. Both make athletes identify with injustice in a way that makes them speak out -- even with everything at stake and the eyes of the world upon them -- from lofty positions in the social order.
In 2016, what seems now about a thousand years ago, Colin Kaepernick took a knee against police brutality. "Stick to sports." Other players did it with the same reaction.
But sports is often a harbinger of what is about to happen in society. Kaepernick was a young, black, rich athlete who was suddenly connected to social justice causes in a way that made him risk his career for the right to speak out. If a man with everything to lose would do such a thing, why is anyone surprised that people with hardly anything to lose would speak out, lash out in any way they thought possible.
Kaepernick, LeBron James, Eric Reid, the people you are scoffing at as you watch the news today, none of them is interested in giving comfort. Just as the former policeman in Minneapolis wasn't interested in the comfort of George Floyd as he kneeled on his neck.
Too late now, we have seen people wondering why America didn't listen to Kaepernick, didn't heed and understand, even as we know the answer: Why should it when nothing was at stake. Kaepernick's kneeling was a gesture, easily dismissed by a nation fond of gestures. Here's a military jet flyover when tens of thousands of Americans are dying from a virus. Feel better now? Kaepernick's gesture was ignored when it should have been taken as seriously as it was presented. It was a barometer, plummeting to indicate an approaching storm.
And now that gesture is global. European soccer stars are taking a knee while America burns.
Things aren't burning because people want to destroy. Things are burning because people feel they have nothing, so why not destroy. People are angry because that knee on their necks isn't just symbolic. If you are black in America, it doesn't take much for a situation to put your life and liberty in danger, whether you're Kaepernick or Floyd.
We don't know whether the counterfeit $20 Floyd is said to have passed was with his knowledge. At any given time, countless bogus bills are in circulation.
We don't know whether a white man or white woman would have received the same reaction of force. We don't even know if being confronted by different officers would have made everything different and Floyd would be home right now.
We don't know anything except that could have been any of us -- pop stars, athletes, me. And that's why there is anger, a lacerating force that has bred opportunistic destruction and looting. If famous athletes who have spoken out are tired, imagine how tired regular black folks are, especially when the warnings were so vivid, calculated to intrude upon Sunday afternoon viewing parties and sacred anthem moments.
Still, America isn't listening. Police officers have spoken out about the Floyd incident, have taken knees and marched with protesters, and still things are burning and still the anger is righteous and all-consuming. You wouldn't listen to the best of us, so what chance do the rest of us have to be heard?
When Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised a black-gloved fist at the 1968 Olympics, they knew what would happen and did it anyway. Smith said in a 2008 interview, "We had to be seen because we couldn't be heard."
A nation hasn't listened to the best of us, so what's left? In the absence of hope, rage can fester. But this time, nobody can say people weren't warned.
Sports on 06/04/2020