KC Roos athletic boss Brandon Martin looks for strategies to end ‘Goliath of racism’
Brandon Martin, the athletic boss at the university closest to the protests in Kansas City, said the actions that have led to the demonstrations “is the latest wake-up call that needs to be addressed by each of us with a spirit of determined solidarity.”
Martin, the second African-American athletic director in UMKC’s history, issued the statement Wednesday. The school’s main campus is a block away from the Country Club Plaza, where demonstrations have occurred daily since last Friday in protest of the Memorial Day incident in which a black man, George Floyd, died after a white Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
Martin’s statement was crafted in the form of a letter to the school’s athletes, coaches and officials.
“Systemic injustice is not a thing of the past or simply a political issue to be marginalized and bandied when convenient,” Martin said. “It is a real and present danger that must be approached urgently with moral fortitude. As proud citizens of this nation, we must stand for the more difficult right and just actions instead of the easy wrongs of indifference. We cannot paradoxically ignore these brutalities and yet still try to profess to respect every human life.”
Martin, in his second year at UMKC, said he will organize a virtual roundtable discussion, “Discourses of Being Black in America,” for African-American student-athletes, coaches and staff and use his results to “enact meaningful change.”
Also, UMKC will incorporate a diversity, inclusion and equity program for its athletic department.
“My hope is these strategies will bring about the needed transformation of understanding respect for difference, promoting the need for justice and equality, and ending the Goliath of racism in our nation,” Martin said.