This podcast episode is brought to you by Coors Light. These days, everything is go, go go. It's NonStop hustle all the time. Work, friends, family expect you to be on twenty four to seven. Well, sometimes you just need to reach for a Coors Light because it's made to chill. Coors Light is cold loggered, cold filtered, and cold package. It's as crisp and refreshing as the Colorado Rockies. It is literally made to chill. Coors Light is the one I choose when I need to unwind. So when you want to hit reset, reach for the beer that's made to chill. Get Coors Light and the new look delivered straight to your door with drizzly or INSTATCRT Celebrate Responsibly. Coors Brewing Company, Golden Colorado. Hey there, my name is Ricky Smith and I'm the founder of Random Acts of Kindness Everywhere, a nonprofit that simply does exactly what it says, promote kindness everywhere. We know the world is crazy right now. If you are searching for a podcast that has a deeper conversation about race, my co host Angel Gray and I will be discussing everything going on right now on our podcast Random exa podcast on Blue Wire podcast Network. To find out more, go to Rake now dot org. Enjoy the show. Hey, Hardwoo Knox listeners. Dan fa Valley here running solo this time for what should be a fairly short, straightforward podcast. As you've probably noticed, we've sort of taken the past week plus off. It didn't really feel right publishing any straight NBA content. I've grappled a lot with how to handle the first Hardwood Knox podcasts following the killing of George Floyd, who died at the hands of Minneapolis police on Memorial Day after officer Eric Chavin kept his knee on mister Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes. My first instinct at the time was that sticking to basketball wasn't an option. I cover a predominantly black sport for a living, I am profiting off black culture. Acknowledging mister Floyd's death, the protest that have ensued, and the athlete's responses is an obligation to me. My second instinct, though, was that the world doesn't need another white male commenting on the plight of people of color. The flip side to that, the thought of asking a person of color to join the podcast Now to discuss police brutality and racial injustice felt selfish. Why should it be on black people to educate me, to talk to educate us, just because for the privileged among us, this is more topical than usual. This is an everyday stasis for people of color who have been drawing attention to these injustices long enough that it shouldn't be only on them to speak about it. I was listening to the Black Opinions Matter podcast I believe it was on Monday, and Jamal Hill pointed out that it's also on white people to have this discussion too. Amplifying promoting the unheard voices is the bare minimum show of support, and in some ways it can be an act of deference, shifting the onus of responsibility back onto the people of color. But this can't be a people of color versus racism issue. It's an everyone versus racism issue. There's no You've got to hear both sides to this. Racism is wrong, police brutality is wrong, Killing unarmed people of color is wrong. The age old depression of black people is wrong. And yet despite all these issues being so damningly objectively wrong, they remain systemic admitting to how ingrained how an eate the oppression of people of color in our society is, has always been, needs to become in everyday occurrence among white people. And that's going to entail acknowledge confronting our own white privilege, which shouldn't be difficult, It shouldn't even be uncomfortable. Travan Edwards of The Athletic put it best on Twitter when he said, white privilege doesn't mean that your life has been easy. It means that the color of your skin hasn't made your life harder. That should not again be hard for us to admit. Anyone who denies that white privilege exists is telling on themselves. It doesn't always manifest in the same way. It can come in different forms, but it exists, and it exists on the most basic levels in ways that we wouldn't necessarily think about because we're so privileged in the first place. Fact, police officers generally stop black drivers at a higher rate than white drivers. Fact. After being stopped, black drivers are searched at a higher rate than white drivers. Fact. Black people are incarcerated at a disproportionately higher rate than white people. Fact. And this is a quote from the Washington Post. Between twenty and thirteen and twenty nineteen, about seventeen percent of the black people who died as a result of police harm were unarmed, a larger share than any other racial group and about one point three times more than the average of thirteen percent. Fact As of twenty and eighteen, black people were two times more likely to live in poverty than white people. Fact and this is a direct quote from a CBS News article in December of twenty nineteen. Black people account for about twelve percent of the US population, but occupy only three point two percent of the senior leadership roles at large companies in the US and just point eight percent of all Fortune five hundred CEO positions, according to an analysis done by the Center for Talent Innovation, a workplace think tank in New York City. And by the way, for people who don't think that these issues intersect with sports, this is happening in sports. You're not going to see as many black people in positions of power, from head coaches to the front office. The NFL was trying to come up with a rule to ensure that their teams would interview people of color for these vacant positions being the NFL. They of course missed the mark with the way that they went about it. But this is absolutely a thing in sports, which is a huge part of why we're talking about this in the first place, even though we're at a time we're sticking to sports is really inexcusable at this point in fact, the coronavirus is disproportionately impacting black and brown communities. This is why Black Lives Matters exists because it needs to, and providing counterstances right now doesn't equate to a difference of opinion or a moral high ground. The all Lives Matter centrists are at best minded a top their pedestal of privilege, interpreting Black lives matter to mean only Black lives matter. That's on them. The value of other lives, white people specifically, has always been implied. Black lives are the ones that are under siege. The blue lives matter people have no leg to stand on. Blue is not a race. Even if you view becoming a cop as some higher calling, it is still first and foremost a choice. An implicit value is again ascribed to their lives in how they're trained and armored and armed and just generally afforded the benefit of the doubt and protection by their own agency and the courts. Spinning Black Lives Matter is some undue attack on police is really just bad faith. It's only a few bad apples. Stance is a farce. That argument doesn't hold any weight when you're talking about a profession that arms its employees with weapons and gives them control over people's livelihoods. Good cops should have zero issue denouncing these quote bad apples and at the bare minimum, showing some semblance of active support for the protesters and people of color. By this, I don't mean we need more photo ops. I suppose the videos of police officers kneeling with protesters, hugging protesters are fine, but what are they actually accomplishing. In the macro, we're still seeing videos of police abusing their power over peaceful, unarmed protesters, firing rubber bullets for moving vehicles, deploying pepper spray for moving vehicles. Look what happened in Buffalo fifty seven members of the Emergency Response Unit resigned, not from the police force, just the unit, to make that clear. When two of the officers at the time were just suspended. They've since been charged with second degree asault, but they were initially suspended because they pushed a seventy five year old man to the ground and the demonstration over the death of George Floyd. As long as displays of this abuse of power continue to surface, there needs to be a greater level of empathy and introspection from the police force. And I'm not even saying that they simply need to back reform, acknowledge that what reform you've gone through hasn't really worked. Body cameras haven't helped the situation. Just again, look at the protests and what some cops, many cops have felt emboldened to do, knowing that they're being watched, knowing that they're at the height of this unrest and every single move they make is going to be dissected. There needs to be in understanding it, admittance that hey, we know why people are calling for our disbandment or for us to be significantly defunded and have that money funneled too, back to the communities, the ones who were more impacted by policing in the first place. Derek Chavin had seventeen complaints against him before he used his need to choke hold George Floyd, only one of which included any disciplinary action. Timothy Lohman, the police officer who fatally shot twelve year old Tamir Rice in twenty fourteen, was deemed unfit for duty at a previous police department, and he was going to be fired before he instead resigned, and by the way, he was not criminally charged in the killing of Jamir Rice. Brianna Taylor a mod arbery. The list goes on what reform has been done, what's happening now. It's clearly not working. Everyone should be able to recognize as much without first feeling the impulse to say, but what about the good cops? And similarly, focusing on the looting and the rioting in the current climate only moves the goal posts, shifting attention away from what matters most, that black lives matter. The looting, whether it's born from opportunism or out of sheer longstanding warranted frustration, is a harbinger of our larger failure. Peaceful protests haven't worked, we didn't listen or in still meaningful change. When Colin Kaepernick yield during the national anthem, or when athletes wore I can't Breathe t shirts just to name a few examples, and there are obviously many more. They were told by men that it wasn't the place, or that it wasn't the time. But protests aren't supposed to come on these pre ordained terms. They exist to incite change by way of disruption, and so everything that's happening now it feels inevitable when considering how much and for how long we've ignored the pleas from people of color. And for that matter, do we really think Derek Chavin would have been charged with second degree murder without this current unrest, or that the three cops with him, two of whom held helped Chavin restrain George Floyd? Would they have been charged with aiding in a betting second degree murder without these protests? Without these riots. On so many levels too, we're also still just not listening, even when there are plenty of peaceful assemblies happening, not just in the United States but around the world. The Black Lives Movement matter started in twenty thirteen. Kaepernick kneeled during the National Anthem about four years ago to protest police brutality and racial inequality. Until just now, Drew Brees still felt it necessary to make that show of protest about the flag. He since retracted his statements, but we're talking about years, years that he had to Google talk to his teammates to try and understand what was actually being protested. In so far as naivete was ever an excuse, it isn't anymore. At some point, you're choosing to ignore everything that has gotten us here. None of this is meant to be performative on my part, and I honestly, sincerely hope it doesn't come off that way. I am part of the problem as someone who was for so long, let's say, too cowardly to speak up and leaned on tweets and contributing to go fundmes or bail funds to show support, which, by the way, I'd often do without mentioning anything, just seeing the links on Twitter, because I was afraid that it felt like I'd be looking for retweets or a pat on the back for doing so, putting way too much thought into what should be a basic understanding that showing your support for black lives mattering is not something that you need to think twice about. Amplifying the voices that need to be heard is more important than anything I have to say listen to Jalon Brown, to Malcolm Brockden, to Lebron James, to Jamal Hill. Listen to people of colored period. But let's also normalize speaking out in support of people of color, rather than passively nodding toward them. People of color deserve our undivided attention and our voice and our action. Speak out against police brutality, call out tone deaf government leaders who show zero empathy. Make it clear you won't stand for the assassination of people of color in this country, and hire people of color if you're in a position to do so. I'm just going to end all this with this. Also, donate if you can to places that are committed to ensuring black lives matter. If you can't promote organizations that do, I will be making a donation via an Act Blue Charities page that funnels money to more than a dozen different organizations. I'll pin the link to my Twitter profile for anyone who wishes to do the same. Black Lives Matter, I'll talk to you also. Sugar Ray, Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvelous, Marvin Hagler, and Thomas Hearns legends whose four way rivalry define one of the greatest errors in boxing history. Relive their decade of dominance in the new Showtime Sports documentary The Kings, a four parts series premiering Sunday sixth only on Showtime