Star Forum on Race & Sports evoked candid and moving conversation with All-Star panel
To Bill Self, it was a “murder right before our eyes.”
To Tyrann Mathieu, it was yet another episode in an endless line that has led many Black people to feel “traumatized.”
To Cuonzo Martin, it was the sort of video that ordinarily his “stomach just can’t take,” but that he forced himself to watch in its entirety … and feel what Bob Kendrick described as “vileness.”
“When you watch that video, if you don’t feel that (pain) you have no soul,” said Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
A month after the casual and brazen murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white Minneapolis police officer, those were among the candid and impassioned feelings shared Thursday afternoon in a Facebook Live forum conducted by The Star on the intersection of race and sports.
But there was much more held in common by the panel that included Royals general manager Dayton Moore and K-State women’s basketball player Christianna Carr along with Mathieu, safety for the Chiefs, Martin, the Missouri men’s basketball coach, and Self, the Kansas men’s basketball coach.
The meeting on a Zoom video conference was moderated by The Star’s Blair Kerkhoff, and it was riveting and moving and even exhilarating.
What resonated most was an abiding conviction that the issue of racial inequity is at the forefront of their minds as never before.
And that each of them has both the platform and the responsibility to make that a cause.
Moore, whose empathy and heart for providing opportunity have been reflected in visits to prisons and his sense of the Kansas City Urban Youth Academy as a virtual calling, said he recently spoke with a group from the team with a message befitting the point.
“I’m not concerned about winning one more baseball game. I’m concerned about getting (racial equality) right going forward,” he said. “Our legacy in Kansas City needs to be (about) what have we done to include others and give opportunities to others who have been disadvantaged.”
Early in his career, Moore was told “the cream will rise to the top.”
But he has come to understand it’s hardly that simple and wants others to remember that, too.
“There are people in our communities and in our country that start on second and third base, and they act like they hit the double or the triple. They had nothing to do with that,” he said. “It had everything to do with what type of family you were born into, what your color of skin is. And there’s many who have been disadvantaged.
“We have to do a better job of mentoring, speaking up and providing a way for others to succeed so they have hope.”
Like Moore, Martin has shifted to a mindset that says his work toward racial equality is what must drive him most.
“From this point on,” Martin said, “this is who I am.”
As the group considered what has changed so much in the last month, Martin suggested part of it may be that “time stopped” amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.
That left many less distracted with daily life, including the absence of live sports, and thus more focused on the ghastly episode that came to represent enough is enough — and prompted protests such as the ones Carr went to in Topeka and Minneapolis and that came with death threats.
“I feel like people need to have those hard conversations,” said Carr, later adding that educating people to try to understand each other includes distinctions such as not saying you don’t see color. “I want you to be able to see my color, but I want you to be able to accept it, and I want you to be able to educate yourself and learn why I am the way that I am.”
Another notable theme was one of discovery.
With a tinge of regret, Martin recalled coaching at the University of California in Berkeley near where San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began taking a knee to protest police brutality during the national anthem.
“You want to do something. You want to step out. You want to say something. But, truthfully, self-preservation takes over,” said Martin, who said he had prayed to God that the next time the moment to stand up for this came he would “get out in front of this in some way, shape or form.”
Mathieu, too, expressed regret that he and others felt “we let Colin Kaepernick down” because they were focusing on themselves and their careers and “not necessarily understanding the true impact we could really make.”
(As seen in the Black Lives Matter video in which Mathieu and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes appeared and promptly evoked a sympathetic response from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.)
Self said he’d previously had the sense of himself maybe having a pretty good handle on the Black experience … only to realize now it wasn’t “near as good” as he thought.
So he’s worked the last month to speak with players and take in related podcasts and documentaries to try to better “see totally the perspective that others come from.”
He already has the sense that that means encouraging his players to have more of a voice and “have me stand with them, as opposed to standing in front of them and having them always stand behind me.”
Actions will mean more than words, of course, from reforming the reasons Mathieu grew up scared of police to systemic issues with coaching opportunities for Blacks everywhere from the NFL to college basketball. Not to mention Major League Baseball front offices and about everywhere in between.
Lamenting the few Black coaches in in the NFL, Self appealed to Mathieu and said, “How can that be? And how can that be in college basketball, as well?”
As for how it can be better along the way to real change?
“We have to be comfortable being uncomfortable,” Kendrick said.
And that starts with really listening and removing the filter like these six did on Thursday, both in terms of what they expressed and what they seemed to be earnestly taking in.
“We’ve always known injustice in the world,” Moore said. “(But) to Cuonzo’s point, maybe it was COVID-19 that made us stop and reflect (all the more). But I think for the first time, our hearts felt the injustice. And that’s why I’m so positive and optimistic about change.”
Kendrick sees that hope in dynamic, charismatic people like Carr and Mathieu using their platforms for athlete empowerment. He sees it in Martin, Moore and Self having “a heart in this.”
Asked what progress might look like, Kendrick said, “I think progress is in progress.”
Then Kendrick thought of Buck O’Neil, as he so often does, and the idea that there are so many more good people than bad people in a battle Moore has called not a matter of Black and white but good vs. evil.
“So often times the good people have sat idle, though, and watch bad things happen and not been engaged and involved,” Kendrick said. “I think we’re seeing a polar shift in that this time around.”
Because only those without a soul wouldn’t finally feel moved now.
This story was originally published June 26, 2020 at 10:33 AM.