Introduction
There have been several instances within the last twenty years of athletes protesting against various social issues, most notable among these being racial injustice. Athletes who have protested against racial injustice in America are drawn from various sports including football, basketball, and track and field athletics. The Georgetown University men's basketball team was the first collegiate team to protest the decision of grand juries not to induct the police officers over the deaths of two unarmed black men in December 2014 (Arnett 18).
Protests Against Racial Injustice
The police officers in question were from Ferguson, Missouri, and New York. To protest, the athletes wore to practice t-shirts with the words "I can't breathe" printed on them, which were the same words that had been said by one of the shot black men in a video recording that had gone viral. In November the same year, Ariyana Smith who is a Knox College women's basketball player had walked around with her hands up in the "Don't shoot" position during the national anthem, then laid on the court for four and a half minutes to symbolize the four and a half hours that another one of the shot black men's body had been left unattended on the street (Arnett 18).
Other athletes who have gained nationwide recognition for protesting against racial injustice include Deon Long, a wide receiver of the University of Maryland; Colin Kaepernick who sat on the bench in protest during the United States national anthem of a National Football League (NFL) preseason game in 2016; and various other players from such NFL teams such the Oakland Raiders, Seattle Seahawks, Pittsburgh Steelers and the Tennessee Titans (Boyce 22; Druckman et al. 7; Hall et al.1; Schmidt et al. 31; ).
Controversy Surrounding Athlete Protests
There has been very sharp and divided opinion on whether or not athletes should protest against racial injustice. On one hand, proponents of athletes protesting against racial injustice believe that athletes are well within their rights to protest against the matter just like any other members of society. Opponents of this argument, on the other hand, criticize athletes' protests as a shift of focus away from their core mandate that is athletics. An objective view on this argument is that athletes should have freedom of speech to protest against racial injustice.
Effectiveness of Athlete Protests
First, athletes protesting against racial injustice is likely to be a very effective way to combat racial injustice because of the wide and deep influence they have in American society. Racial injustice has been predominant in the American society for a very long time. Slavery and slave trade ended in the 1860s and more than a century later, there still are very many reported cases of racial injustice. What this trend implies is that radical measures need to be taken to eradicate this vice, and protests by athletes against it might just be an effective action. The second reason why athletes should protest against racial injustice is that they will be creating a platform for many other stakeholders to start speaking and intensify their voices against it.
The fight against racial injustice has often originated and stayed within the marginalized groups of people in America. The fight has lacked the opportunity to get mainstream due to a variety of factors including fear of victimization, unrealistic punitive measures that have often been meted against those who openly fight against it, and belittlement of racial equality efforts by the white majority. By athletes taking a stand and publicly declaring their stand against racial injustice, it may be a way of beginning a constructive discourse that many other groups of people will join in to collectively demystify the fight against racial injustice. Athletes should also protest against racial injustice as a way of widening peoples' perspective on the critical place sports and athletes have in society and their role in effecting change. Lastly, some of the victims of racial injustice are actual athletes' family members, friends, relatives, and loved ones. Where racial injustice continues to exist and affect people who are closely related to athletes, it would be unreasonable to expect them to sit back and not take a stand in fighting back against such injustice.
Influence of Athletes on Society
Compared to other professions in society, athletes have a much wider and deeper influence on society behavior. It is for this reason that many brands often choose sports personalities and athletes to endorse their brands as a marketing strategy. In this era of social media, trends and hashtags began by football and basket players or around sport-related events in the country garner a lot of following, especially among young people. Young people are the ones who are expected to really take the fight against racial injustice and bring the vice to an end. Therefore, sports personalities and athletes who are immensely loved and looked upon by these young people will be making very profound statements against racial injustice by leading the masses and protesting against it.
A lot of discourse in America around such critical subjects as nationalism, sexual orientation, sexism, and HIV/AIDS stigmatization has arisen out of athletes coming out and speaking about these subjects. The reason behind this phenomenon is that athletes create a platform for other people to speak about the subjects by they themselves first coming out to address them. In the same way, the best way for discussions around racial injustice to intensify and solutions to be found is if athletes continue to protest and inspire other people to follow suit. Sports and the role that athletes play in society have only been appreciated to a certain extent by Americans and the rest of the world. A majority of American society only takes note of athletes when they come out to engage in competitive sports. After the competitions and tournaments, they are once again overshadowed by other events until the next competition comes up. This is a very limiting practice given the vital role that sports and athletes play in unifying people, encouraging patriotism, and a sense of unity. Hence by athletes protesting against racial injustice, they will be widening the scope of the role of sports in society beyond entertainment. Athletes are human beings who, just like the next person, have the right to express themselves and fight for their rights and those of their loved ones. Racial injustice is often in the form of violence against people of color, wrongful arrests, and even murder. Some of these people who face racial injustice are actual family members, friends, affiliates, and loved ones of athletes. As other people who are related to the victims protest against these injustices, so should the athletes.
Influence of Athlete Endorsements
Marketing studies show that athlete endorsements are very critical in influencing the purchase intention, attitude towards an advertisement and attitude towards a product that they endorse (Arthur). A 2016 report in the New York Times indicates that the Tommy Hilfiger brand doubled sales of its underwear year-over-year from the time it signed Rafael Nadal, a professional tennis player, in December 2014. In the same period, the sales of men's accessories rose by 50% that was directly attributed to Nadal's involvement. These statistics show the level of influence that athletes have on brand perception among consumers, and by extension on social issues. In the few months following Magic Johnson's, a then Los Angeles Lakers NBA athlete, announcement that he had contracted HIV; the Orange County Register reports that over hundreds of people across the U.S. admitted to also having the virus and seeking treatment and prevention for it. Apart from this athlete creating a platform for other people to combat this issue, he had widened society's perspective on the role of athletes in championing messages of human rights and social change. This is the kind of change that athletes can initiate by protesting against racial injustice.
Criticisms of Athlete Protests
A lot of opponents of the idea of athletes protesting against racial injustice base their argument on the fact that such activism irrevocably destroys the athletes' careers and that most of their protests that often involve failure to stand during the national anthem are disrespectful to the United States of America (Beaton and Futterman 2; Pena 11; Araki 1).
It is true that some athletes have ruined their careers out of their activism against racial injustice. For instance, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos of the Olympic Project for Human Resource were both banned from the Olympic Village by the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic committee for raising black glove-cladded fists clad while on the victory podium to symbolize Black Power in the 1968 Olympics (Hall et al. 2). There have been several other reported incidents of college athlete protesters being indefinitely suspended from their learning institutions due to activism (Sarah 2; Schmidt et al. 31). However, these misdeeds are a reflection of the deep-rooted racial injustice that continues to be propagated in America and should not be used to invalidate these athletes' noble acts.
The argument that sitting in protest during the national anthem is disrespectful to the United States of America is a one-sided perspective that fails to consider the motive behind the action. Sitting during the national anthem to protest racial injustice is an action intended for social benefit, is well within the law, does not mean many harm, and does not constitute the protesting athlete breaching his professional duty to the United States of America. For this reason, discrediting such a noble action on the basis of being disrespectful to the United States of America is pretentious and a double standard. The U.S. as a country does not stand for racial injustice as noted by Pogue, and respect for it cannot, therefore, be used to justify inaction on the issue (2). Kane and Tiell support this view from a normative ethics perspective (10).
Conclusion
In conclusion, athletes should have freedom of speech to protest against racial injustice. The wide and significant influence that these athletes have will be very effective in instituting social change against this practice, create a platform for others to speak out on the issue, allow the athletes to express themselves freely, and cement the place of sports as an instrument of social change. The argument that such protests are detrimental to the athletes' careers and disrespectful to the United States is shallow and fails to address the reason why the protests are being made in the first place. All Americans ought to join athletes in protesting against racial injustice and collectively condemn any efforts to victimize athletes who choose to exercise their freedom of speech in this manner.
Works Cited
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Arthur, Rachel. “The Marketing Power of Sports’ Stars.” The New York Times, Apr. 4, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/fashion/sports-athletes-marketing.html. Accessed 14 September 2014.
Beaton, Andrew, and Matthew Futterman. NFL Protests Spread as Trump's Feud with Athletes Escalates; More Players Kneel in Protest during National Anthem; President Urges Fans to Boycott Games Until they 'Stop Disrespecting'." Wall Street Journal, Sep 25, 2017, http://ezproxy.library.csn.edu/login?url=https://search-proquestcom.ezproxy.library.csn.edu/docview/1942185259?accountid=27953. Accessed 14 September 2018.
Boyce, Travis. "Putting Learning into Practice: Integrating Social Media, Crowd Learning, and #ColinKaepernick in an Introductory African American History Class." Radical Teacher, no.109, 2017, pp. 21-28, 63.
Brown, Sarah. Activist Athletes. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2017, http://ezproxy.library.csn.edu/login?url=https://search-proquestcom.ezproxy.library.csn.edu/docview/1883608967?accountid=27953. Accessed 14 September 2018.
Hall, Eric A., Robert BJ Marach, and J. Marcos Reynolds. "Policy Point—Counterpoint: Do African American Athletes Have an Obligation to Fight Against Racial Injustice?" International Social Science Review 93.2 (2017): 18.
Kane, Daniel, and Bonnie Tiell. Application of Normative Ethics to Explain Colin Kaepernick’s Silent Protest in the NFL. The Sport Journal, Jul. 21, 2017, http://thesportjournal.org/article/application-of-normative-ethics-to-explain-colin-kaepernicks-silent-protest-in-the-nfl/. Accessed 14 September 2014.
Oram, Bill. “Magic Johnson’s HIV announcement 25 years ago was game-changing moment for society. The Orange County Register.” The Orange County Register, 7 Nov. 2016. https://www.ocregister.com/2016/11/07/magic-johnsons-hiv-announcement-25-years-ago-was-game-changing-moment-for-society/. Accessed 14 September 2018.
Pogue, Gregory. "Flag & Football in America." Diverse Issues in Higher Education 34.21 (2017):32.
Schmidt, Samuel H., et al. "An Experimental Examination of Activist Type and Effort on Brand Image and Purchase Intentions." Sport Marketing Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 1, 2018, pp. 31-43.
