[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. The NFL's preseason training camp is underway this month. It seems trying out new players and figuring out the keys to success before the season officially kicks off in September.

Speaker 2: Boom, boom, boom, boom. They just ran right at him.

Speaker 3: He not only rambled, but he rumbled and stumbled.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's an exciting moment for tens of millions of people who are going to tune in to watch pro football each and every week. But at the end of last week, there was some major news that took place off the field. A settlement administrator uploaded a report showing that hundreds of Black former NFL players now qualify for compensation from the league. This development is a result of adjustments to dementia tests that eliminated the discriminatory practice known as race norming.

Following a civil rights lawsuit that was filed by two former players last March, the NFL said that they would stop doctors from applying lower cognitive base scores on dementia tests for Black players compared with white players. Now, these recent developments happened in the wake of the NFL's roughly $1 billion settlement with former players who filed concussion related lawsuits. That settlement was approved by a US district judge in 2015, but due to the use of race norming, Black players were at a disadvantage when suing for financial awards.

Maryclaire Dale: Only about 28% of the dementia claims were leading to an award, and these are claims which doctors had determined that the person had a certain level of dementia.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Associated Press reporter Maryclaire Dale spoke with us last year about the NFL's use of race norming.

Maryclaire Dale: 70% of the time they were being rejected. That is when I believe the lawyers started to look more closely at how they were scored, and I think to their surprise realized that this race norming was occurring.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For more on the latest development in this story, I spoke with Ken Jenkins, a former NFL running back, and an advocate for former NFL players dealing with brain injuries.

Ken Jenkins: This is a big win for players who are going to be involved in the concussion settlement, but we can't get too happy. It is a small victory as far as I'm concerned. There's still an amazing amount of log jam in the process to actually get the funds out to the guys. Now, more guys are going to get approved and we do expect the process to get better, but right now we still have a bunch of guys approved who still don't have any money.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Talk to me about what this does or doesn't mean for you personally.

Ken Jenkins: Well, I don't have a case. My friends who I have seen over the years who've begun to struggle is the reason that I'm in this fight. Contrary to popular belief, guys, aren't just trying to get a little extra money. These guys actually need the funds to support their families and to get the help that they need. If I can do my little part to influence their lives going forward, I'm happy to do it. I have to tell you I get a little bit too much attention here and I'm happy to be a spokesman, and I love the men that I'm talking to and for, but it's the wives who have hoisted those families on their shoulders to take care of their men, to take care of those families, to work jobs and to advocate for everybody else.

Melissa Harris-Perry: At the core of anyone, as you enter into your 50s, 60s, and then far beyond that into your 70s and 80s, are issues about how our minds work, the question of whether or not we're going to still be ourselves. We're talking about players much younger than that who are already classified as having early to moderate dementia.

Ken Jenkins: Yes, and this is the most frightening part of this entire discussion. There's still mystery behind why some guys can suffer several concussions and not show as much decline, and guys who've had a couple of minor concussions devolve quickly. There's still a mystery about how, what and why. The most important part here is that you don't want to have it. All the money in the world cannot replace your your mental and physical acuity as you age, you do want to see your children grow up and succeed, and you want to see your grand babies also into their 20s or 30s as long as you can go, but you want to have your mind intact, and this is what we're talking about.

Brian Urlacher came out and said, well, some of these guys are just trying to get a little extra money, and that comes from a completely uninformed position. If I could sit down and talk with him, I would tell him that these men they need the resources, not to mention he has millions of dollars in the bank.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I want to remind folks that it's easy to think of retired professional football players as people living in big mansions with plenty of cash, that in fact the situation for the vast majority of former players is quite different than that. Can you talk to me a little bit about the challenges there might be in even finding some of the players, the former players who are eligible because of their own economically marginal circumstances right now.

Ken Jenkins: I'm glad you asked this question. This is a great question. We have formed what we have called a Player Advocacy Committee and we pushed class counsel Chris Seeger on bringing us in so that we can have visibility and transparency in the process of how decisions are made, about what happens in the settlement, about the mechanisms to approve claims. On that committee one of our charges is to make sure the information that has just come out gets to every single player, Black, white, or purple or green.

That's going to require a massive effort to make sure that we, basically, find the guys who are tough to find. We do have about 4,000 more Black players that we know who are eligible to be retested right now for free, and we need to get to all those players, but we need to get to everybody. What we've done here is going to make the settlement better for all players, not just Black players.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are these payouts going to be enough?

Ken Jenkins: That's a good question. If you ask anybody who's 40 years old the answer is no. Nobody's getting rich off this, but what it will do is open up avenues for these men to seek the help that they need from professionals and perhaps preserve what they have left for as long as they can so that they can perhaps be able to go back to another profession that maybe is not quite as demanding so they can feel worthwhile as providers for their family. Perhaps some, just get out of the holes that they're in financially because of some of the cognitive decline that they have been experiencing.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Are there ways the NFL could and should be providing various kinds of support for the families in addition to the question of these payouts?

Ken Jenkins: There are programs out there, the 88 Fund to support the men, but it takes early intervention as far as I'm concerned to help these men through the times as they decline. Part of it is we have to really encourage our brothers to go out there and to establish a relationship with a neurologist so that they can monitor their mental acuity or cognitive acuity over time. Certainly programs like that would help more, and there are some. I don't think there're enough and I don't think they're marketed enough. I don't think that they're pushed enough by the NFL.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Ken Jenkins is a former NFL running back and such an advocate for your team in the broadest sense, and it's always a pleasure watching and listening to your humanity and your empathy. Thanks so much for joining The Takeaway.

Ken Jenkins: Thank you, Melissa. Thank you very much.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: As always, I appreciated talking with Ken Jenkins who's fighting for justice and a little bit of dignity for his NFL colleagues. I also wanted to understand the history of these policies that led to such a long fight. For that and pretty much every other sports story there's one person I always call.

Dave Zirin: My name is Dave Zirin. I'm the sports editor at The Nation magazine and I'm author of the book The Kaepernick Effect.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I asked Dave to talk to me about the importance of the $1 billion NFL settlement with Black NFL retirees.

Dave Zirin: It's very important because the NFL was involved in what can only be described as a racist conspiracy to deny benefits to Black NFL players because they were following a practice known as race-norming. It meant that their cognition scores on concussion tests were basically rated as fine even if they rose to the level of brain injury and post-concussive effects. The scores were dialed down because they have Black skin, and basically were told, "Well--" Well, they weren't told this, this was discovered through leaks of doctors.

Basically, the thinking of medical officials was and has been since the late '90s, Black people score lower on cognition tests anyway. Therefore, if they score badly, it's not because they had concussions, it's not because they had brain injuries, it's because they're Black. Therefore, they are not entitled to this $1 billion settlement package. Now, the NFL, I should be very clear, has admitted to no wrongdoing.

The judge in the case basically said, "Okay, I'll dismiss these accusations, I'll dismiss this case, but only if the NFL and the medical company that was doing these tests and the players, only if you come up with an agreement that allows for these payouts now to take place to the players who were legitimately harmed by this race-norming practice." That's what they did.

It was horrible public relations for the National Football League, particularly at this time when they're trying to look very aware and cognizant about racial issues and racism, really, as a way to show the players, 70% of whom are Black, that they are sensitive to racism in US society, and then this race-norming case drops, and it doesn't exactly look good. It goes against the whole having "end racism" written in the end zone. The NFL has not had to admit to any wrongdoing as long as they file the settlement and start paying out to the players who've been denied proper compensation for head injuries.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This still doesn't mean eligibility for everyone. Can you help us understand that aspect a little bit more?

Dave Zirin: Well, it's more just that the players who had scored low on the cognition test but had their scores rounded up because of "race-norming" are now eligible. Dozens and dozens of players who previously were denied are now eligible, but not every Black player who has tried to get a piece of the settlement is eligible at this point, but efforts to get there continue.

Melissa Harris-Perry: There is so much more to this story and so much more in the world of sports. We're going to be right back with Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation.

[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: We've been talking to Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation, about the news that the NFL will need to compensate a number of Black former players who had previously experienced bias in dementia testing. I asked Dave to further explain the practice of race-norming and what it signaled about the ways the NFL is thinking about race.

Dave Zirin: Race-norming in the United States is as old as the transatlantic slave trade where justifications were made about why enslaved people could work in the southern climate in a way that poor white workers or Indigenous people would not be able to do so as a justification for the transatlantic slave trade. You've seen it through eugenics, through phrenology. All throughout US history, there is "race-norming", in other words, having different medical conclusions for Black people as opposed to white people, usually with extremely deleterious effects towards the Black population. This is about institutionalized racism in medicine. Like I said, it's as old as 1619.

That being all said, race-norming was adopted by the Carter administration in the late '70s as an affirmative action program to grant federal contracts to Black applicants, to basically round up their applications. That was referred to as race-norming. It was an effort to correct racism in the late '70s under Carter, and Reagan kept that in place throughout the 1980s. It was only overturned, that was, by George H. W. Bush because it was discovered as the issue du jour by people like George Will who compared the United States to apartheid South Africa because they were offering federal contracts to more Black Africans.

Just to give me an idea that it's got this complicated history, that in the late '90s, it emerges in the cognition field as a way to say, "Well, wait a minute, maybe these scores are low on cognition to account for issues like institutionalized racism, poor public education. Maybe that's why these scores are low." Unfortunately, we live in a society where racism is part of how the society functions. When it came time for the NFL players to get judged about whether or not they had cognition issues, look what took place instead. Instead, they were denied benefits, basically being told, "Your scores are not because you got hit in the head hundreds of times, it's because of the color of your skin and your background."

That was utterly disgusting. We have to look at this as a step forward. Now, you asked about the NFL and what they've been trying to do recently. Ever since Colin Kaepernick first took that fateful knee six years ago, there has been an effort by the NFL to operate on a carrot and stick basis in relation to Black players. The carrot is, "We are sensitive now to racism. Our eyes are open. We are going to have a committee that deals with it among players that the League will support. We are going to support programs in different cities. We are going to have sloganeering like "end racism" and putting that in the end zone. We are going to be aware as to the reckoning that is taking place in this country."

That was the carrot part. The stick part, of course, was denying Colin Kaepernick a job in the NFL, which sends its own message to players, like, "Okay, if you want to do something about racism, do it through official channels, but do not do it on your own because we will come down on you like the hammer of Thor." They're trying this delicate balance to appease players but also not push away white fans who don't want their kinds of politics in their sports and to punish Colin Kaepernick. It's an example for a new generation of players. Obviously, what they're doing here is, they're spinning a lot of plates [chuckles] on a lot of sticks to be able to get their perspective pushed through.

This race-norming thing was the-- Imagine the person spinning the plates on the sticks, and a 300-pound lineman comes along and just creams them. That's what this race-norming suit was because it basically laid lie to everything the NFL was saying about being more sensitive and being more aware. The NFL, they just are in a race right now to get this off the front pages and off the sports pages as soon as humanly possible because it did upset a great many players. It was very important for the NFL to get the case itself brought by Davenport and Henry, to get that dismissed so they could work out a settlement and start moving past this issue.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right, Dave, let's move out of the NFL for just a minute.

Dave Zirin: That was a lot, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I just--

Melissa Harris-Perry: No, I live for it.

Dave Zirin: [inaudible 00:17:48] complicated. It's a lot. There's a lot there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It is. It's complicated, and my life isn't directly affected by it in the sense of-- I don't have a direct loved one who is being impacted by this, and yet it's still complex. Actually, let me ask about one aspect, I guess, that maybe is part of how all of us are affected, which is-- I've asked you this before, but I'm going to keep asking because it's always possible the answer will change. Is it okay to watch football? I've worked out, in my feminist soul, that it's okay to listen to hip-hop. Help me to understand what our responsibility is as consumers of the NFL.

Dave Zirin: First of all, you asked about my answer changing. I don't know if my answer has changed, but you're talking to somebody now whose 14-year-old son is playing JV football for his high school, which wasn't the case a few months [crosstalk].

Melissa Harris-Perry: Dave, really?

Dave Zirin: The amount of soul searching that had to go on in our family before we allowed him to do this was extremely intense because we love our boy so much, and we want to protect his beautiful brain. At the same time, he's coming at us with an utter passion for wanting to do this. He's also coming at us after two years of pandemic learning, where he was isolated and not able to play, and his whole life has been about sports.

His desire to do this and his passion for doing this actually overcame our resistance. I've got a lot of very, very complicated feelings about this, made slightly easier by the fact that he's going to be backup quarterback, which is by far the least-hit position [chuckles] in the sport. He's going to stand on the sideline with a clipboard all year. But it's still--

Melissa Harris-Perry: But it must've been hard for you to make this decision.

Dave Zirin: It was incredibly difficult to make this decision. This is what it comes down to in the NFL as well, which football players have only had over the last 10 years. That's full prior knowledge of what it is that you're stepping into and what it is that you're going to do and what the effects are of playing. You have to have informed consent which, again, players did not have until recent years. We went over this chapter and verse with my son. We said we're playing a one and done rule, like you get one concussion you're never doing this again. That's where we landed. Ever since he's been going to training camp it's literally eight hours a day for three weeks.

He was doing four hours a day every evening over the entire summer. He was named captain because he didn't miss a practice the entire summer. We, basically, stayed home the entire summer so he could go to these football practices. Already the family making sacrifices and allowances so he can do this. On the other side of that, this very difficult equation is the incredible passion that he's bringing to the table.

Also, honestly, what was a part of it too, was discussions with his coach and knowing that the kinds of issues that I think are related to football away from injuries, but that have to do with much more what has come to be referred to as toxic masculinity will not be tolerated in this locker room. Because when it comes to those issues, which is a whole separate conversation about patriarchy and the way football reinforces it, I've always believed that if you have a good coach that it doesn't have to be that way, that a coach can direct the political tenor of a locker room, like nobody else, like no parents, like no teacher.

That's about what the rhythm of the locker room and the politics of a locker room. A coach creates that. I do have a lot of faith in this coach. At least that is off the table in terms of a concern. My son is a diehard feminist. My son believes very strongly that homophobia is not to be tolerated anywhere in his presence. If I see that changing one iota because of football, you better believe his pads are also going to remain in that locker room. It's a lot, Melissa. [laughs]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Parenting is no joke. Parenting is some real stuff.

Dave Zirin: It's no joke. It's also these things are very shades of gray. I've had people, honestly, come to me and say, "Given everything you have written about the National Football League, given everything you've said about the National Football League, given the role that you've played in publicizing the cover up of the concussion crisis in the National Football League, how can you let your son play?" The only thing I have to say is, "He's 14 years old and he's coming off two years of pandemic learning and it's an incredibly difficult time for teenagers right now. Incredibly. Every statistic backs that up. The fact that he's found something that gives him joy on a daily basis, it's very difficult to take that away."

Melissa Harris-Perry: Again, the parenting thing is real. The baby wants to play in a world where we want our children to want something, to really want something. He wants to play. Boy, that is--

Dave Zirin: It's shades of gray. You know what I'm saying? I wish I could say we had a position and he adhered to it, but at 14 not that he makes the decisions in this house believe me, but you do have to listen to what they're saying at 14.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Listen, apparently you have a child with some athletic talent. These are never going to be problems in my household. [laughs] Any of a variety of problems, but this is not going to be one of them.

Dave Zirin: Fair enough. That's the other thing too, is that he's good at it. He's good at something that gives him a sense of pride. He's a good student and all that, but this is his sweet spot as far as something that he loves and as a parent stepping in between him and that is a very tough ask.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I hear you. That's a tough one. Dave Zirin, back in my thoughts on an evening basis. [chuckles] Then let's go to a really fun place for a minute. Let's talk about Serena Williams, because speaking of parenting being like a real job, she's parenting, she's talking about wanting to expand her family, but also she has given us more than we deserve and is now making a choice to step into a new phase. Talk to me about Serena Williams.

Dave Zirin: On a several fronts. First and foremost, Serena Williams's career is the greatest in the history of professional sports. That's what I'm saying. That's the mic that I'm dropping. It's the greatest career in the history of professional sports. First of all on the face of it, you're talking about somebody who's been a pro for 27 years. When Serena Williams started playing, Bill Clinton was in his first term. [laughs] In her first match, she made a whopping $250. That was her first professional match against Annie Miller, who's a great answer to a trivia question if you're ever hanging out or at a bar. Annie Miller, the first match and Serena lost to Annie Miller for $250. That was 27 years ago.

Over those 27 years, an unimpeachable career, of course, 23 Grand Slams, 14 doubles major titles. That's 37 grand slam titles over the course of 27 years. Then there's the length of it that you have to take into account, 27 years. Think about someone like Bjorn Borg, who is a hall of fame tennis player, won 5 Wimbledons. Bjorn Borg because of the pressure of tennis retired at age 26. That means Serena's career is older than Bjorn Borg was when he retired.

It boggles the mind. Also, Serena's first years in the pro tennis tour was marked by a lot of discussion about people like Jennifer Capriati, Mary Pierce, people who were teenage phenoms and burned out by the time they were in their late teens or early 20s. You could also think of people like Tracy Austin a few years before Serena. Players like that who were there, then they were gone because of the pressures of tennis. Somehow not just Serena, but her sister Venus didn't only survive, but thrived. Then on top of that, it's not a small issue.

We have to talk about the issues of race and gender in this as well, because the amount of racism that Serena had to face over the course of her career in the very unfriendly world of tennis, the country club world of tennis, the very white world of tennis, the hostile classist world of tennis. She was able to not just survive but thrive, but she also was herself every step of the way, never tried to be anybody. She wasn't. She literally created space for herself where there was not space. When you think of a career of somebody like LeBron James, incredibly impressive over 19 years, he didn't have to actually create space for himself to be a great basketball player.

Serena had to do that in a way that rivals names like Jackie Robinson or Jack Johnson. That's the rare air we're talking about here. When you're talking about what's the space that Serena was able to create for herself as a black woman. Let's talk about her being a woman as well. You're talking about somebody who won the Australian Open when she was eight weeks pregnant. You're talking about somebody who came back to the tennis tour after she almost died during childbirth. Now at the very end in a way that I think has been relatable to so many people, she's saying, "Look, we want to have another child, my husband, Alexis and I, and the choice is tennis or pursuing that particular dream. There is no doing both. That's a choice. I think for many women is going to sound all too familiar.

Melissa Harris-Perry: You do love some Serena Williams. [laughs] This is not the first time that you have said that she is the actual greatest of all time, but taking us through that I think, I can't fail to be convinced.

Dave Zirin: 27 years.

Melissa Harris-Perry: [laughs] When you bring it back to Bill Clinton in his first term that's-- [laughs]

Dave Zirin: I looked at the number one movie in 1995 was Toy Story. Its audience was basically just younger than Serena was at age 14 when she took the court.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Although worth noting Toy Story has now also have a very long career. Wasn't it this summer there was the Lightyear movie. Pretty much Toy Story and Serena. [laughs]

Dave Zirin: Yes. That's what stood the test of time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: This feels unfair to ask and if it is, if it's the wrong framework, pushback. Not that I'm worried that you wouldn't. If Britney Griner played in the NBA, would we have found a way for her to be home or would it be even worse given that she would've been an NBA player?

Dave Zirin: It's a fascinating question because I've spent a lot of time speaking to people who do this negotiating for a living, former government workers, I've appeared on shows with them and heard what they had to say. I think what people have to understand is that it's always a tactical question. How do you get somebody out from the clutches of a government that does not want to release a particular prisoner, especially when they are a political prisoner as I believe that Britney Griner is being held in facing nine years in prison in Russia as she is.

I am of the belief that if her name was Steph Curry, for example, or if her name was Tom Brady, the sheer din would be so loud in the United States for them to come home, that they would've figured out a deal and Britney Griner would be home. The problem, and what Britney Griner has faced from the beginning and I've been writing about this from day one and looking at this, is that there are two wings of the sports movement neither of which I would argue was able to get the job done early.

First, you have this wing of the sports movement that loves Britney Griner, WNBA in particular, their center of very loyal fans and players who've shown themselves to be very powerful political actors, on the political scene, of course. They were told by the US State Department, and I think frankly wrongly told, that they needed to be quiet because delicate negotiations were being done and it's best not to even raise Britney Reiner's name publicly. That was a mistake. They loved Britney Griner so much they took bad advice and did not raise a holy din when she was first arrested.

The other side of the sports world, frankly just didn't love Britney Griner enough. That's to their shame. There's so much racism, sexism, homophobia, and Britney Griner checked every box there that her plight was something that was remarked upon, but also largely ignored to the shame of the sports world. Like I said, Tom Brady, Steph Curry, there would've been on ESPN, a daily counter of how long they'd been behind bars while Britney Griner was barely an afterthought for her first months.

Now, when it was finally realized, largely through the input of Britney Griner's partner Cherelle, that being silenced just was not an option that's only when you've started to see progress in open negotiations and it going to the front of the line at the State Department in terms of issues that they have to deal with. I think that to answer your question, yes, absolutely, if Britney Griner was in the NBA, I think she'd be home by now. I think every effort should be made to return her to her family as soon as humanly possible.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That point about being told to be quiet, it was one we kept asking based on also what we were hearing. You're doing more harm by reporting on it.

Dave Zirin: That a lot. The thing about that that bothered me and I wrote about this at the time was that that advice was coming from the State Department. Immediately we need critical assessment, what's the State department's interest in us being quiet? They're saying it's because they're doing delicate negotiations, but maybe it's because there's a war in Ukraine and they don't want to deal with this at all. They don't want back channels with Russia. It's that idea of we need to have independent assessments of the best way to care for our loved ones and not always accept that the government has our best interests at heart.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Speaking of the government and sport nowhere do governments and sport come together more clearly than in the context of Olympics. You wrote recently about connections between the nation of Qatar and the upcoming 2028 Olympic games in LA. Can you say a bit about that?

Dave Zirin: Well, sure. Only that Qatar gave a ton of money, millions of dollars, to something called the Mayor's Fund in Los Angeles as a way ostensibly, to help fight COVID. This was accepted by Eric Garcetti, Mayor of LA, with open arms but they get something for their money. They get to be welcomed in Los Angeles as the host of the upcoming World Cup.

This process where the LA government looks good because they're taking this money to fight COVID and then Qatar looks good because they're making this donation and then LA praises Qatar for the World Cup and everything they're doing as part of the community of nations. This is all a process.

I'm sure people have heard this phrase in the media this year. It's called sports washing. It's when sports is used as a way to make a government look clean, look good, look just, and what it allows you to do is ignore what's happening behind the curtain. In Qatar for this World Cup, there's a lot going on behind the curtain that's very ugly, namely huge controversies raised by human rights organizations around the world about the number of migrant workers who've died in preparing the World Cup for an international audience. Several dozen have died directly in the building of stadiums.

If you're looking at migrant labor, we're in the thousands, according to some, in terms of people who have died just in the heat of Qatar as a way to build up the infrastructure of the country since the day that they were awarded the World Cup without a word of criticism from the World Cup about whether or not it makes sense for Qatar to host. This is sports washing large.

You're going to see so much about Qatar being this modern country that people should visit. All the stuff that comes with sports washing, we're going to see that when it comes to Qatar and this World Cup. In Los Angeles and Eric Garcetti, there are accomplices in this project. At a time where we need actually more discussion about the rights of migrant workers in the creation of the world cup, instead we're going to get praise for Qatar. I thought this particular instance of the nexus of Los Angeles and the Mayor's Fund in Qatar was a microcosm of something we're going to see in a much broader way.

Melissa Harris-Perry: We lost Bill Russell recently. He's a model of a particular kind of athlete, one who saw his role, not only on the court, but far beyond that. First of all, talk a bit about Bill Russell and his activism, but also maybe say a few words about the Russell mold for players today.

Dave Zirin: Wow. What can you say about William Felton Russell? Really, in that top tier of people we think about in terms of folks who use the platform of sports to try to make the world a more just place. Bill Russell born in Monroe, Louisiana, but raised in the Bay Area, went to McClineman's High School where Curt Flood also went by the way, another great activist athlete. Bill Russell was the ultimate winner on the court winning 11 championships with the Celtics in 13 years. Far more than that, he was somebody who stood up. He was somebody who marched with Dr. King.

He was somebody who spoke out against the racism in Boston at a time where there was so much rhetoric about racism being confined to the Jim Crow South. He played a real role in really popularizing the idea that the North had institutionalized racism that needed to be challenged. He raised that because he lived it being in Boston for all those years. He once said, "I'm not a Boston Celtic, I'm a Celtic," because of what he had to deal with when they retired his number in 1974, he didn't show up to the ceremony and he only really reconciled with the city in 1999. There was a ceremony for him, a statue was presented.

When he was at the arena that day, the whole crowd stood up and cheered for Bill Russell and the tears were real. It's not to say Boston still doesn't have many, many problems, but any transition it's made from the days when it was known as Birmingham of the North, Bill Russell put a lot of blood, sweat and tears in that transition. So much to say about Bill Russell. The story that really moves me so greatly is when Medgar Evers was assassinated, the great civil rights leader, Bill Russell called down to Medgar Evers' brother Charles Evers, and said, "What can I do to help?"

Medgar Evers' brother said, "Please, can you come down right away to Mississippi and maybe have a basketball clinic in the park that's integrated?" Bill Russell did that, at a time where he could have been killed for doing such a thing, he went down and he held these multiracial clinics for kids in Mississippi, in the immediate aftermath of Medgar Evers' death at the behest of the family. That's something that just moves me so greatly. Of course, Bill Russell stood with Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell stood with anybody who needed someone by their side with the unimpeachable history and moral weight that Bill Russell certainly had from Medgar Evers to Colin Kaepernick recently.

Bill Russell was very good at using social media to go after Trump, go after racism. He was somebody who was never satisfied with silence, particularly in his later years, which was such a blessing. Just this tremendous person that we were lucky to have with us here. If your library has the book Second Wind, which was Bill Russell's second memoir, which he co-wrote with Taylor Branch, who of course later went on to write the great King Trilogy about Dr. King starting with Parting the Waters. Bill Russell and Taylor Branch together was just an unbelievable combination.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's a courageous authenticity that feels really different than the sports washing that you were just describing. Let me ask you about one last thing. It is something we learned on Tuesday that the NBA has made a decision that no team is going to play on election day, in November and that all 30 teams are going to play the day before for what they're calling a civic engagement night. This is obviously a midterm election season. Brings a lot of focus and information spotlight onto something that might sometimes otherwise be more low information. NBA with a civic engagement night and no teams playing on election day, is that courageous engagement of American democracy, or is that sports washing?

Dave Zirin: What the NBA is doing is I think a model of civic engagement for the reason that we're one of the only democracies on earth that doesn't do a day off for election day. I think what they're saying is that election day is something that people need to pay attention to and that people need to engage with. We're going to put our money where our mouth is and how we organize our schedule. This is of a piece of what the NBA did in the 2020 elections, where they opened up stadiums as a place where people could vote.

Of course, where the WNBA, which is, of course, part of the NBA intervened, in a historical sense in the elections in pushing back against WNBA franchise owner Kelly Loeffler and played a critical role in the election of Reverend Rafael Warnock to the US Senate. It's a piece of the NBA's recent history and the leadership of Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA. See there's that quote, and I'm going to get it a little bit wrong from Shakespeare about some are born great and some have greatness thrust upon them. This has really been thrust upon Adam Silver.

When he first became commissioner, I believe it was 11 years ago, the league was in an utter uproar because of the racist recordings that were released of LA Clippers franchise owner Donald Sterling. There was going to be a player's revolt basically, and canceling of playoff games because they were so incensed that Donald Sterling owned a team and Adam Silver had to step right into that and immediately deal politically with Donald Sterling forcing him out of the league for a hefty sum, make no mistake about it, but forcing him out, nonetheless, not just blindly defending ownership. Since then, the league has been on a political tilt. Of course the league was electrified.

Players were electrified by the Black Lives Matter movement, felt like they had a role to play. At that point, Adam Silver, just basically trying to maintain some semblance of control, control that he lost in 2020 after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the players starting with the Milwaukee Bucks, just basically went on a wildcat strike against racism and said we're not going to play.

Then Silver canceled other games as well trying to at least stay with it. It's interesting. It's not sports washing. It's not some absolute model of courage. It's the equivalent of Adam Silver. Imagine him like a fly landing on the back of a horse. The horse is moving all over the place at a million miles an hour. The fly deludes itself into thinking that it's riding the horse.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Dave Zirin, sports editor for The Nation. Thank you for that imagery and thank you for joining us today.

Dave Zirin: Great to be here. It's cheaper than therapy.

[music]

[00:45:18] [END OF AUDIO]

 

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.