Derek Chauvin: Guilty verdict is why sports stars won’t ‘shut up and dribble’
It isn’t the end. It’s just the beginning.
This isn’t about Derek Chauvin. It’s about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Jacob Blake, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Tony Robinson, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling and so many others — too many more Black people being killed on a regular basis by police officers for whom those lives simply don’t matter.
It isn’t about justice. Justice would have been Floyd apprehended instead of murdered.
You’re kidding yourself if you think sports stars are more preoccupied right now with the uproar over football’s aborted European Super League than the verdict in the Chauvin case over the murder that rocked the world last year.
They aren’t. Not the ones I spoke to on Wednesday. Or the ones I exchanged text messages with. For them, it is all about Floyd.
On both sides of the Atlantic, Black sports stars know that they have to operate on the basis that it could easily be them.
It could easily be them kissing their kids or their partners for the last time before falling victim to police officers who are protected by a badge.
That’s why they won’t just shut up and dribble. That’s why they take a knee. That’s why they won’t stick to playing football or accept it is time to move on.
READ: Conversation around taking a knee means people are ‘forgetting’ the true cause
The US would probably have looked the other way had it not been for that mobile phone footage taken by teenager Darnella Frazer to leave nobody with a heart in any doubt as to who was at fault on May 25 last year.
Whatever Floyd had said, whatever he had done, once he couldn’t breathe he had a basic human right to be listened to.
Instead, he became a microcosm of what Black people endure each day in a society that simply was not built for them.
So no, Chauvin’s conviction isn’t the end. It isn’t a time for celebration, vindication, or for deluding ourselves that a policing system rotten to the core in the US is going to change any time soon.
It is only the beginning. People of all races marched together last summer as a global movement to ensure Black Lives Matter shook the foundations of our society on both sides of the Atlantic.
Sports stars found their voices and realized their commercial strength. The rest of us realized we could speak truth to power. We didn’t have to worry about risking our space.
The fact that there is relief that the jury reached the correct verdict tells you everything. The man who shot Blake in the back seven times, paralyzing him, last year is back at work and will not face any charges.
Police officers in the US and here in the UK have continued since Floyd to take Black lives and get away with it.
So no. It really isn’t the end. It is only the beginning.
