Even leftists who believe there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between Democrats and Republicans are relieved that we haven’t been living the last three years under the orange thumb of Donald Trump. The former President is an authoritarian, a brutal racist, and a vindictive and unhinged megalomaniac who boasts about sexually assaulting women. That he was ever President speaks volumes about the health of the Republican Party and, frankly, this entire country.
And yet, as we have seen over the last fifty years, electing a Democrat can have a narcotic effect on social movements. Suddenly, the same people who say that “power concedes nothing without a demand” stop making demands, lest we embarrass “our person” in power. This obviously isn’t true in every circumstance, but broadly, it’s simply a fact. Joe Biden is continuing Trump’s border wall, and we’re supposed to feel better because Biden’s wall won’t be as high as Trump’s?
The sports world has certainly experienced some troubling political trends over the past three years, with some notable exceptions. In 2020, it seemed like everyone in the wide world of sports wanted to be an “athlete activist.” The killing of George Floyd by police prompted professional, college, and even high school athletes to take to the streets. In Washington, D.C., the two starting guards for the NBA’s Washington Wizards participated in a march with bullhorns. At the collegiate level, University of Alabama head football coach Nick Saban participated in an athletes march against a confederate statue in Tuscaloosa. And as I detail in my book, The Kaepernick Effect, high school athletes went from taking a knee on the field to organizing their communities off the field. Male, female, trans, Black, brown, and white—a hundred flowers were blooming, and it seemed like the outliers were those who didn’t speak out.
People like me compared the period of 2017 to 2020, when Trump was in office, with the iconic era of the late 1960s, a time that was partially defined by something called the “revolt of the Black athlete.”
Athletes will not lead us. They can be brilliant at amplifying preexisting movements, but they are not the movement.
And yet, since Biden’s election, we haven’t seen a full blooming of those hundred flowers as many of us had expected. Instead, apathy has reigned. An attempt to overthrow our democracy happened on January 6, and few in the sports world really had anything to say. Racism still ravages people’s lives as crime hysteria—which doesn’t reflect statistical reality—dominates our politics, and yet the athletic world remains silent.
I’m not exaggerating. The most potent sports debates of the last three years were reactionary. One was about whether transgender athletes should be excluded by law from playing sports. Another was a topic that sports radio wasn’t prepared to discuss: Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving made a foray into online antisemitism. Since Israel’s latest war on Gaza began, some international soccer players have spoken out, but in the United States, sympathy from athletes for Palestinians in Gaza has been muted at best.
The last three years have not been entirely dreadful for the left, though. We have seen a reemergence of the labor movement, with the United Auto Workers, health care employees, and workers at Starbucks and Amazon making their voices heard, winning gains through multiracial, rank-and-file organizing. In the sports world, something that would have seemed impossible in 2020 materialized when minor league baseball players organized themselves in a union. The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, at long last, also will finally have equal pay. This was a crucial victory.
The lesson of the last three years is clear: If people want to see a return of the athlete activist, then our attention needs to be on the state of the struggle off the field. Athletes will not lead us. They can be brilliant at amplifying preexisting movements, but they are not the movement. It’s part of our obsession with celebrity to think otherwise. We need to build progressive movements for change, and we can approach athletes when we have something to offer. In the words of Howard Zinn, “You can’t be neutral on a moving train.”