Are politics beginning to seep into sports?
Fox Sports NBA analyst Chris Broussard reacts to whether sports leagues have become political action committees, saying it's not permanent but athletes are using their platform to campaign for causes that matter to them.
Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll delivered a message aimed at White people during a video conference call with reporters on Saturday.
Carroll called on coaches to listen to Black people on racism they’ve experienced in the U.S. He talked about the issues his players have faced upon returning to camp and said that “White people don’t know enough” about racism in the U.S.
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“[White people] need to be coached up and they need to be educated about what the heck is going on in the world,” Carroll said, according to the team’s website. “Black people can't scream anymore, they can't march anymore, they can't bear their souls anymore to what they've lived with for hundreds of years because White guys came over from Europe and started a new country with a great idea and great ideals and wrote down great writings and laws and all of that about democracy and freedom and equality for all. And then that's not what happened, because we went down this road here and followed economics – rich White guys making money – and they put together a system of slavery, and we've never left it, really. It has never gone away.”
Carroll added: “And Black people know the truth, they know exactly what's going on. It's White people who don't know. It's not that they're not telling us; they've been telling us the stories. We know what's right and what's wrong, we just have not been open to listen to it. We've been unwilling to accept the real history. We've been taught a false history of what happened in this country, we've been basing things on false premises, and it has not been about equality for all, it has not been about freedom for all, it has not been opportunity for all, and it needs to be. This is a humanity issue we're dealing with. This is a White people's issue to get over and learn what's going on and to figure it out and start loving everybody that is part of our country, and that want to our country, wherever they want to come from.”
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The longtime coach encouraged his players to use their platform to speak out on the issues and attempt to make changes in society. He said his players are asking for respect and to be “accepted just like all of our White children and families want to be.”
“It's no different because we're all the same,” he said. “There's a lot of people who don't see it that way, but there's a lot of people that do, and I'm hoping that from this point forward, maybe there's a new door to open for us, and we can walk through it together with the thought of doing what's right. What's right is treating people equally, we know that. Forefathers knew it. They wrote it all down, they just didn't do it. They got caught up in making money and they figured out a way to do it, and it meant persecuting and abusing an entire race of people.”
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Carroll concluded his 15-minute rant by calling on coaches to step up and do more.
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