The NAACP’s boycott call is a wake-up moment for the American Black athlete | Howard Bryant

Six years after the nation underwent a so-called “racial reckoning”, Black America is under comprehensive assault. The assault comes from the country’s highest elected office, where the president has, from the first day of his re-inauguration, made clear his belief that it is the white people of the world who are the true victims of racial discrimination. He has codified into policy what many non-Black Americans of all political persuasions believe quietly in public and loudly among themselves:

As it limits immigration to the United States from the rest of the world, the administration earlier this week announced plans to allow entry to an additional 10,000 white South Africans as an “emergency response” to anti-white discrimination. The New York Times reported this will cost taxpayers roughly $100m. The assault comes from the country’s highest judicial office, where the supreme court gutted the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 under the argument that protecting the voting opportunities of Black people is a discriminatory practice and not a restorative one, despite the hundreds of graves throughout the south, marked and unmarked, of Black Americans killed for trying to vote. The assault continues from the country’s highest legislative branches, state and federal, where massive southern redistricting efforts threaten to erase much of the Black political representation won over the past 60 years. The move is similar to one from 1902, when the cities of New Orleans, Montgomery, Memphis and Mobile all within weeks of one another passed legislation segregating public rail cars. Within two years, all public accommodations in the south – from transportation to water fountains – were separated by race. With the three branches of government mobilizing, the country’s corporations have moved in lockstep, reducing or eliminating initiatives to encourage hiring of Black professionals instead of remaining committed to remedying the historically low rates of Black employment across corporate America. Whether voluntarily or for fear of government reprisal, from sports to retail, education to entertainment, the anti-Black hostility is as bold and aggressive in this country as it’s been in the last 75 years. This week, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) turned to sports to join part of its dissent, calling for Black athletes to boycott public universities in the Southeastern Conference (SEC), arguably the most powerful football conference in the country and certainly its greatest incubator of Black athletic talent. The NAACP is responding to a political attack with a social and economic one, for no institution is as culturally relevant in the south as college football, and few economic engines gain as much public attention as sports. The NAACP is betting that Black Americans will recognize, finally, the urgency of the moment, that the parents of these gifted, valuable youths will join the fight, put two and two together and realize their power. Black people represent 14% of the population, but they are certainly more than 14% of American culture, and the Black athlete is the most successful, most influential and most visible Black employee this country has ever produced.

Key points

• As it limits immigration to the United States from the rest of the world, the administration earlier this week announced plans to allow entry to an additional 10,000 white South Africans as an “eme…
• The New York Times reported this will cost taxpayers roughly $100m.
• The assault comes from the country’s highest judicial office, where the supreme court gutted the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 under the argument that protecting the voting opportunities of Bl…
• The assault continues from the country’s highest legislative branches, state and federal, where massive southern redistricting efforts threaten to erase much of the Black political representation w…
• The move is similar to one from 1902, when the cities of New Orleans, Montgomery, Memphis and Mobile all within weeks of one another passed legislation segregating public rail cars.