Speaker 1: Push it. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, I'm already taking a knee.
Speaker 1: I'm already on one knee. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: told you this, but my entire childhood I could not
Speaker 1: sing the national anthem or do the Pledge of Allegiance
Speaker 1: in school because growing up in the Nation of Islam,
Speaker 1: when I was a kid in grammar school, that was
Speaker 1: like we were just instructed from day one, Man, you
Speaker 1: do not do it. That was my version of taking
Speaker 1: a knee before there ever was a Colin Kaepernick. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I'm Khalil Jebn Muhammed. I'm Ben Austin.
Speaker 1: We're two best friends, one black, one white. I'm a
Speaker 1: historian and I'm a journalist. And this is some of
Speaker 1: my best friends are Some of my best friends are athletes.
Speaker 1: In this show, we wrestle with the challenges and the
Speaker 1: absurdities of a deeply divided and unequal country. And today
Speaker 1: we have the franchise player for Pushkin Industries on our show,
Speaker 1: the one and only Malcolm Gladwell. Malcolm Gladwell Outliers coming
Speaker 1: inside with us. We are going to talk to him
Speaker 1: about sports and activism and how politics and athletics. They intersect.
Speaker 1: Let's get into it. Game time. That's right, Game time, man, Malcolm.
Speaker 1: It is so amazing to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 1: We have been, uh, we've been We've been thinking about
Speaker 1: this moment for years now. So I'm very flattered. That's
Speaker 1: just that's just how old I am. People can think
Speaker 1: about me for years. We are obviously excited to actually
Speaker 1: have you in house in studio today. Thank you. And
Speaker 1: one of the things we wanted to talk about today
Speaker 1: is about athletes, sports and politics. And maybe a good
Speaker 1: way to start is your great podcast, The Legacy of Speed,
Speaker 1: and it tells the story of the nineteen sixty eight
Speaker 1: Olympic Games and the track stars, the sort of unlikely
Speaker 1: track stars from San Jose State, and maybe maybe you
Speaker 1: could give us a quick synopsis of what happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight in the nineteen sixty eight Olympics and
Speaker 1: why it's it's so important for understanding sports and politics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um. In nineteen sixty eight, the you know there
Speaker 1: there were all these great college teams. Maybe the most
Speaker 1: iconic sports team of that era was the San Jose State.
Speaker 1: San Jose State track team UM coach by gun named Budwinter,
Speaker 1: who was this legendary sprint coach, and he takes this
Speaker 1: gear commuter school because he has these new ideas about sprinting,
Speaker 1: but how to sprint him run fast for a time.
Speaker 1: He has a track team which has not just the
Speaker 1: best sprinters in America, but the best sprinters in the world,
Speaker 1: like multiple world record holders on one team, and several
Speaker 1: members of that team are the ones who stage the
Speaker 1: famous protest in Mexico City and with a we remember
Speaker 1: on the stand of the of the two hundred beaters,
Speaker 1: Tommy Smith and John Carlos raised their clenched fists right
Speaker 1: as that iconic photograph. Um, well, Tommy Smith and John
Speaker 1: Carlos were Bud Winter Runners. They were members of that
Speaker 1: of that fable track team, and so it's like, it's
Speaker 1: this really fascinating moment in sports. It has these incredible
Speaker 1: cultural ramifications. So so black athletes, African American athletes, they
Speaker 1: come in first and third in the two hundred. They're
Speaker 1: wearing black leather gloves and they raise their fists above
Speaker 1: them and it's like you said, it's one of the
Speaker 1: most iconic images in sports. Yeah, that's right. One of
Speaker 1: the things that and listening to the podcast and you're
Speaker 1: visiting this moment, is is really learning about Harry Eetwards.
Speaker 1: I'd love for you to say one more thing about
Speaker 1: Harry Eetwards as someone who helped to make some of
Speaker 1: this possible. So Edwards is also a San Jose guys.
Speaker 1: He's on a part of that same track team. He's
Speaker 1: a little older than the others, but he's the one
Speaker 1: he sort of articulates a kind of philosophy, an ideology
Speaker 1: of sports. People thought about sports as a kind of pasttime,
Speaker 1: and he said, no, no, no no, what sports are a
Speaker 1: kind of reflection of society's deepest beliefs, of its values,
Speaker 1: of it that participating in sports can be as political
Speaker 1: an act as demonstrating in the streets. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was he articulately, it's a whole of sport as being
Speaker 1: something that's embedded in the fabric of society. You can
Speaker 1: study sport and learn about a society no one that
Speaker 1: had not occurred to anyone before. As incredible as that
Speaker 1: sounds today. So Harry Edwards goes and gets his PhD
Speaker 1: in sociology and becomes the kind of he's kind of
Speaker 1: the philosopher of this movement, and he's at the center.
Speaker 1: He was at the center of the nineteen sixty eight protests.
Speaker 1: He's the guy who's behind the scenes bringing these athletes together,
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what should our response be to
Speaker 1: you know, the does as a black athlete have a
Speaker 1: responsibility to say something in face of the kind of
Speaker 1: not just racial oppression at home, but racial oppression around
Speaker 1: the world. But then Harry Edwards goes on and you
Speaker 1: can't find a political protest involving sports to this present
Speaker 1: day that doesn't have his fingerprints on it. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's just well, I want to unpack that moment and
Speaker 1: its legacy particularly has been an eye like yourself, come
Speaker 1: of age. You know, we are primarily seventies babies. We
Speaker 1: become teenagers in the nineteen eighties, and we're tennis kids.
Speaker 1: That was our childhood sport. In some ways, that's how
Speaker 1: we met, playing high school tennis together and in sort
Speaker 1: of thinking about my own sense of like who were
Speaker 1: sports heroes that had a political consciousness. We also grew
Speaker 1: up in the same neighborhood as Muhammad Ali wait Muhammad
Speaker 1: Ali is living in Chicago, or Muhammad Ali owned a
Speaker 1: home across the street. As you know, my great grandfathers,
Speaker 1: Elijah Muhammad. They lived on the same block. So yes,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I remember seeing him outside the
Speaker 1: computer store where Khalil and I met, and you know,
Speaker 1: his Parkinson's might have already begun, and he had these
Speaker 1: fists that were the size of like Catcher's mits, and
Speaker 1: he was just sort of fooling around. Everyone's like, hey, champage,
Speaker 1: champ and he would just like throw a jab and
Speaker 1: it looked like a lightning flash. Yeah. Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: so we you know, we have these personal encounters with
Speaker 1: these sports grades and and perhaps none more significant at
Speaker 1: the intersection of sports and politics than Muhammad Ali. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And by the time we are coming of age in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties, it's just a completely different political
Speaker 1: time and a different political time for athletes, right, Like
Speaker 1: that made me think of Michael Jordan. So we're growing
Speaker 1: up in Chicago. We have the great fortune as sports
Speaker 1: fans to be like in middle school when Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: starts with the Bulls and to see him evolve into
Speaker 1: the greatest maybe athlete of all time. And you know
Speaker 1: what a ridiculous thing to root for this team where
Speaker 1: like they're going to win all the time, because they
Speaker 1: have this guy, you know, Superman. But but you know,
Speaker 1: I've been doing all this work about this killing in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two where a seven year oldest shot to death.
Speaker 1: And in the nineties it's actually the highest murder rate
Speaker 1: in Chicago of all time. And you know, crack epidemic
Speaker 1: is raging, there's so much there's this seven year old
Speaker 1: is killed, and it's sort of like set into motion
Speaker 1: this conversation about what to do and Michael Jordan nobody
Speaker 1: on the bull nobody says anything. I mean, there's not
Speaker 1: and there's I don't even think there's a demand to
Speaker 1: say anything. It's so far from the discourse of that time.
Speaker 1: You know, Michael Jordan has this famous comment right around
Speaker 1: then when there's a Senate race in North Carolina where
Speaker 1: he's from, and there's an arch conservative running against a
Speaker 1: black candidate, and he says, Republicans buy sneakers too, meaning
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say anything. And I like, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe throw this back at you, Malcolm. You know, it's
Speaker 1: thinking about the ways that the athletes and politics actually
Speaker 1: reflect their times, you know, rather than sort of shaping
Speaker 1: the times. We very rapidly go from an euro where
Speaker 1: people are demanding of black athletes like Arthur Ash or
Speaker 1: cream Abdul Jabar or those sprinters in sixty eight or
Speaker 1: Muhammad al either demanding that they be kind of complicit
Speaker 1: in social change. And we in a space of not
Speaker 1: a generation, I mean have a generation. Yeah, you get
Speaker 1: you get Jordan who who you know, his alignments are
Speaker 1: completely different. He's and he's able to say. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think Charles Barkley, remember that the I am not
Speaker 1: a role model, not a role model says, He explicitly
Speaker 1: declines to take up that particular burden and makes and
Speaker 1: both of them, I think are making a justifiable argument,
Speaker 1: which is in addition to all the other burdens I
Speaker 1: have to bear. Why do I have to do this?
Speaker 1: I'm just an athlete. I you know, I got a
Speaker 1: lot of my played already, and you want me to
Speaker 1: battle these things that are bigger than me and outside myself.
Speaker 1: Do I agree with that? Not necessarily? I understand it though. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I also it's funny because this has been but Malcolm,
Speaker 1: it's also it's corporate test. It's not just it's not
Speaker 1: just like my craft, right, I mean that even the
Speaker 1: Charles Barkley thing that he said was part of a
Speaker 1: Nike advertisement campaign. Like it's sort of like I got mine, Yeah,
Speaker 1: But I mean what they're asking is to be treated
Speaker 1: the same way a white athlete is treated. No one
Speaker 1: asked Peyton Manning to speak up against speak out against,
Speaker 1: you know, climate changer. More than that, Peyton Manning is
Speaker 1: from New Orleans, a place with as serious of social
Speaker 1: problems as you can find in the United States of America.
Speaker 1: I guarantee you no one has ever said to Peyton,
Speaker 1: how do you feel about the fact that New Orleans
Speaker 1: has got you know, murder rates that are through the
Speaker 1: roof and dysfunctional this and that and so. Like if
Speaker 1: I'm a black athlete and I'm watching that, I sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, I have great sympathy for them who say,
Speaker 1: you know what, why why does Peyton get to watch?
Speaker 1: Why does Tom Bradley get to Tom Brady? Tom Brady
Speaker 1: get to you know, he tom Brady is rewarded more
Speaker 1: than that. He is deified for his singular focus on
Speaker 1: the game of football. They say, of demand or no distractions,
Speaker 1: the game, you know, and everything that's all about. His
Speaker 1: greatness is summed up by his complete and utter motion
Speaker 1: of football. When a black athlete does that. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: you know you're ignoring your community, You're not. At a
Speaker 1: certain point that double standard becomes intolerable for these guys,
Speaker 1: and Barkley Barkley and Jordan's just saying, you know, effort like,
Speaker 1: I'm sick of this, and I so to see where
Speaker 1: they're coming from. I do get the double standard. I'm
Speaker 1: with you a thousand percent on that. I think the
Speaker 1: difference is that Peyton Manny doesn't represent a community that's
Speaker 1: metaphorically speaking underwater in New Orleans. I mean the country
Speaker 1: we live in is the presumption this has Ben's I
Speaker 1: think point about a corporate ethos is that Brady's an
Speaker 1: extension of the franchise. He is the franchise, and the
Speaker 1: franchise makes its money by not pissing off it's millions
Speaker 1: of fans, and so the only people who really have
Speaker 1: something to lose are the black people who see this
Speaker 1: representative figure who has a platform and a voice to
Speaker 1: actually say something because people are literally in the streets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm working on this book about Los Angeles Black Los
Speaker 1: Angeles in the thirties, forties and fifties, and it's a
Speaker 1: kind of meta biography of Tom Bradley, and Bradley's part
Speaker 1: of this group of athletes that are at UCLA in
Speaker 1: the thirties, among them Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson is his classmate.
Speaker 1: All these really interesting. They're a very very small group
Speaker 1: with them, and all of them face a version of
Speaker 1: this choice in their life and in this in their
Speaker 1: case it's many of them are. A couple of members
Speaker 1: of this group are Olympians and their Olympics is thirty
Speaker 1: six do we go to the Nazi Olympics? Right, same
Speaker 1: same question that we're revisiting in sixty eight, just with
Speaker 1: different cast of characters, and they're all asked to resolve
Speaker 1: this question of what is my what is the appropriate
Speaker 1: path I ought to take in the world to express
Speaker 1: my anger at the way my people are being treated.
Speaker 1: And the thing that the idea that I'm most interested
Speaker 1: in is the mistake we make is in assuming there's
Speaker 1: only one path and there's multiple paths. And at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, you can we can look at
Speaker 1: someone like Michael Jordan twenty years out and we can say,
Speaker 1: did Michael actually do more for Black America by playing
Speaker 1: the role he did than if he had been outspoken.
Speaker 1: Not everyone has to be outspoken. If no one was outspoken,
Speaker 1: if not a single black person of cultural authority was
Speaker 1: saying anything in the nineties about anything to do with racism,
Speaker 1: then I would say, Michael, you got a problem. But
Speaker 1: there are people who were saying stuff, and Michael was saying,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and make my case in a
Speaker 1: different way. I'm going to confront whatever demons were faced
Speaker 1: with as a people using my own strategy, which is
Speaker 1: to demonstrate that a black man can be the hardest
Speaker 1: working and smartest man on the basketball court. Malcolm, that's
Speaker 1: really interesting this set of choices and using Michael Jordan
Speaker 1: as a kind of example. We know from legacy of
Speaker 1: speed that you have some ideas about this. So after
Speaker 1: the break we want to hear more about these choices
Speaker 1: and how they make a difference in the larger struggle
Speaker 1: for racial justice. We'll be right back after the break.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to some of my best friends are today.
Speaker 1: Our guest is Malcolm Gladwell. We are talking sports, politics,
Speaker 1: activism and justice. And Malcolm, so you were just telling
Speaker 1: us about Michael Jordan's choices to be the best and
Speaker 1: the hardest working basketball player in history and that that
Speaker 1: feels to you like also a contribution to some form
Speaker 1: of politics. So talk to us a little bit about
Speaker 1: some of what you learned in your work on legacy
Speaker 1: of Speed, about the different choices that people have when
Speaker 1: it comes to trying to make a difference. So we've
Speaker 1: got we have three examples in a sixty eight Games
Speaker 1: of how African Americans chose to chose to express their
Speaker 1: anger at the way they were being cheated in the
Speaker 1: way that you know black people around the world are
Speaker 1: being treated. One approach is the approach that was taken
Speaker 1: by people like Tommy Smith, which is will go and
Speaker 1: we will make a public protest in front of the
Speaker 1: entire world, so we're we're not going to turn our
Speaker 1: back on the the institution of the Olympics as problematic
Speaker 1: and troubled and racist and whatever as it is. We'll
Speaker 1: go and make a stand when we're there. Second approach
Speaker 1: is what Kreem Abdul Jabbar does. And remember Kreem doesn't
Speaker 1: go to Kream would have won a gold medal betting
Speaker 1: Boycott's he stays home, right. The third approach is to
Speaker 1: go and just to behave like everyone else. Michael Jordan's approach.
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan, Right, those are your options, um and and
Speaker 1: Malcolm you cite in in the Legacy of Speed. You
Speaker 1: cite a source for this, a book that has sort
Speaker 1: of presented these three three choices of opposition fame. It's
Speaker 1: the It's the Um, the famous book by by the
Speaker 1: economist Alberto Hirshman, one of my one of my favorite,
Speaker 1: not just mine, many people's favorite thinker of the twentieth centuries.
Speaker 1: He writes this brilliant book called Exit, Voice and Loyalty,
Speaker 1: which is really about this question. You have options. These
Speaker 1: are the three options that are available to you. You You
Speaker 1: can go along with it. You can you can leave.
Speaker 1: You can you can if you don't like your public schools,
Speaker 1: you can give up and homeschool your kid or moved
Speaker 1: to the suburbs. You can go to school board meetings
Speaker 1: and speak up and say I'm angry. Or you can
Speaker 1: just keep your mouth shut and hope things get better.
Speaker 1: Those are your choices, right, And there's a case to
Speaker 1: be made for all three choices. At various point Alberto
Speaker 1: Hirshman happens to like what he calls Voice. He thinks
Speaker 1: that going to the Olympics and speaking up is the
Speaker 1: right move. But he's not dismissive. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: sit here and tell you that krime Abdul Jabbar made
Speaker 1: the wrong decision sixty eight that was consistent with who
Speaker 1: he is. He's someone who's deeply thoughtful and principled, and
Speaker 1: he personally could not square his participation in those games
Speaker 1: with his beliefs. And although although Malcolm you you, you
Speaker 1: kind of do make the case against it, in a
Speaker 1: way in Legacy of Speed, you remind us that none
Speaker 1: of us remember that he boycotted the sixty eight Olympics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but he didn't. It wasn't lasting. It didn't make change
Speaker 1: for him. Like as an individual it made sense, but
Speaker 1: in terms of affecting change right like it's but I
Speaker 1: don't think who I guess I would say to critique
Speaker 1: my own position in it, I've now I've rethought this. Actually,
Speaker 1: since Speed did Legacy of Speed interressing in my new book,
Speaker 1: I'm much more sympathetic to those who make different choices
Speaker 1: than speaking up. The cream had gone to sixty eight
Speaker 1: and spent the rest of his life second guessing his decision,
Speaker 1: then I think that would have been a tragedy. It's
Speaker 1: not who he is, right, like, everyone has to be free.
Speaker 1: One of the things, one of the tragic things of
Speaker 1: the way we judge the angry and the dispossessed is
Speaker 1: not only do we judge them for being at the bottom,
Speaker 1: we also judge them for the ways in which they
Speaker 1: try to come up from the bottom. And we create
Speaker 1: this hierarchy of options for them, and we say, the
Speaker 1: noblest thing for the disadvantage to do is to speak
Speaker 1: out bravely, right, and the least noble is for them
Speaker 1: to meekly go along, to be a kind of Uncle Tom.
Speaker 1: And my point is that that's just as unfair as
Speaker 1: the old system. You can't judge people for how they
Speaker 1: choose to respond to everyone is. As long as someone
Speaker 1: is thoughtful about the decision they're trying to make, I
Speaker 1: am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this is a really interesting dilemma,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad we're talking through it, because admittedly I'm
Speaker 1: taken with Bill Roden's provocative thesis in the book he
Speaker 1: wrote several years ago called forty Million Dollars Slave, which
Speaker 1: essentially tells the history of the commodification of black talent
Speaker 1: in sports that black people for most of the history
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, and competitive professional sports have been
Speaker 1: used for the purposes of creating wealth on behalf of
Speaker 1: the owners of these sports teams in every field of
Speaker 1: sports endeavor, and that at a certain point, their ability
Speaker 1: to use sports, say Jackie Robinson, to do something that
Speaker 1: transforms society, is stymied in part because the financial rewards
Speaker 1: shutting up and dribbling becomes so great that people no
Speaker 1: longer can attach any kind of social mission to their
Speaker 1: sports athleticism, and he sees this as a loss despite
Speaker 1: what I think your bigger point is that some people
Speaker 1: are built to do a certain kind of thing well,
Speaker 1: even within a socially charged context. Michael Jordan may never
Speaker 1: actually have been the right person to be a spokesperson.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably right, and that Korean Abdul Jabbar
Speaker 1: found his voice outside of the arena eventually, and so
Speaker 1: maybe he needed to do his best there to create
Speaker 1: that space. I'm okay with that. But I do think
Speaker 1: that this other context is real and meaningful, and that
Speaker 1: money matters in terms of the choices at athletes today
Speaker 1: make about their their politics. Please, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: I wanted to go back to that comment and made
Speaker 1: about Michael Jordan setting a standard for being the hardest
Speaker 1: working and smartest guy in the court. And I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a trivial accomplishment. And I say this because
Speaker 1: I read I forgot where I read it. I was
Speaker 1: reading through some academic journals and I came across the study,
Speaker 1: brilliant study in which they simply they went through, I
Speaker 1: mean thousands of hours of NCAA tournament basketball announcing footage
Speaker 1: from announcers talking and just tried to just did that thing,
Speaker 1: you know, and this has been done before. Were they saying,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about a black player's accomplishment, what are
Speaker 1: the adjectives we use? And when we're talking about a
Speaker 1: white player, And it's like, and it's smart for a
Speaker 1: white player, it's smart for a white player, and it's
Speaker 1: athletic and it's emotional for the black player. And I
Speaker 1: looked at that and I say, you know what, we
Speaker 1: have such a long way to go even now, and
Speaker 1: we fool ourselves that we're in this luxurious position now
Speaker 1: where our athletes can we can ask our athletes to
Speaker 1: debate the fine points of legislation before the Congress, and
Speaker 1: I would say, you know what, in most cases, that
Speaker 1: is way fucking premature, Like there is an awful lot
Speaker 1: of room for someone like Jordan coming along and proving
Speaker 1: to a lot of people who are that who are
Speaker 1: carrying around some unexamined prejudices in their heart about what
Speaker 1: black people can or can't do, and proving to them that,
Speaker 1: you know what, I am both the most physically talented
Speaker 1: person on the floor, but also the hardest working and
Speaker 1: also the smartest. And I wonder if that contribution isn't
Speaker 1: in retrospect incalculable. I'm gonna put another spin on that study,
Speaker 1: which and thinking about it, which in another read of
Speaker 1: that is that sports is inherently political, right, you can
Speaker 1: say that it's it is like, you know, this pure
Speaker 1: just you know, space where people compete and it's outside
Speaker 1: the realm of politics and sociology and all these other
Speaker 1: things that if we're even when we're you know, you
Speaker 1: just describe the even even the lens that people through
Speaker 1: see sports, it's racialized, it's politicized. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think a lot about the Olympic Games and sort of
Speaker 1: the idealization of human achievement. You know, excellence and to
Speaker 1: think about that kind of excellence without thinking about all
Speaker 1: of our failings and hypocrisy, like they go hand in hand,
Speaker 1: right or or I think about baseball, I sort of
Speaker 1: did writing about baseball earlier in my career and thinking
Speaker 1: about a kind of the gauzy way that that baseball
Speaker 1: is imagined as sort of Americana and you could only
Speaker 1: sort of see it as this kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 1: pre racialized past, like a lot of baseball literature to
Speaker 1: sort of escape racism, imagine something like, you know, like
Speaker 1: shoeless Joe needs to imagine nineteen nineteen in some corn
Speaker 1: fields when it's not racialized. It's so wrapped up in
Speaker 1: some idea of American exceptionalism and some dreamy idea of
Speaker 1: America that not, you know, it's it contains all of
Speaker 1: its hypocrisies. It's like you have to sort of start
Speaker 1: digging in there. What's absent, what has to be excluded? Ye,
Speaker 1: you can't see the two without without you know, without
Speaker 1: grappling with these with these issues, I mean, and the
Speaker 1: whole thing is heightened by the fact that thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: sports was just one of a number of different areas
Speaker 1: in which we conducted a national conversation. Now it is
Speaker 1: the only area that's interesting. It's the only mass it's
Speaker 1: the only mass media phenomenon left is that in politics,
Speaker 1: and politics is like, that's impossible. The only way we
Speaker 1: can have honest conversations. It strikes me about these things
Speaker 1: is basically it's basketball and it's football. So it's like, well,
Speaker 1: these things are these things are freighted. Now, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a really interesting transition to just talking about contemporary moment
Speaker 1: and particularly the NFL U and I have two things
Speaker 1: I want to bring up here. One is that just
Speaker 1: your point about the weight of racist stereotypes that still
Speaker 1: animate sports commentary in live sports today. We all just
Speaker 1: witness how the contest between the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen
Speaker 1: Hurts and Patrick Mahomes, the first two black quarterbacks to
Speaker 1: square off in the NFL, is itself part of this
Speaker 1: historical context that the role of the quarterback. We talked
Speaker 1: a lot about Brady Peyton Manny, the role of the
Speaker 1: quarterback has always been the brains of the team. And
Speaker 1: here for the first time in history, not because we
Speaker 1: watched it, but because we talked about it, because it
Speaker 1: was part of the story because the media kept coming
Speaker 1: back to it. What does it mean that we now
Speaker 1: have these two outstanding black quarterbacks in the Super Bowl? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's uh, you know so the question,
Speaker 1: the question is, was that another kind of watershed when
Speaker 1: it's to your point. It's to your point about that
Speaker 1: media now in the study that right, if we were
Speaker 1: some if we were in some other version of America
Speaker 1: in the future, this would not have been a media frame. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I think but perhaps the most
Speaker 1: famous black quarterback which I think we should talk about
Speaker 1: is Colin Kaepernick in light of more recent times around
Speaker 1: this question of sports and activism and one of the
Speaker 1: things that's crazy about Colin Kaepernick. I'm pretty sure this
Speaker 1: is true that Harry Edwards, who advises the guys in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, also advises Colin Kaepernick. He's advising Colin
Speaker 1: Kaepernick in twenty sixteen. Yeah. Like it's both inspiring and
Speaker 1: also like, man, is there only one like guy like this?
Speaker 1: It's like, is there really that little like active? Going
Speaker 1: back to the same guy, Yeah, Yeah, he's the Yoda
Speaker 1: of professional sports. Well he's a Bay Area guy, so yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of that is about that. Um that, well,
Speaker 1: there's several you know, there's a friend of mine. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna kind of tacitly name drop. I have
Speaker 1: a very fancy finance friend who went to a The
Speaker 1: height of that Bernie made off right, No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: The height of all this was that some meeting with
Speaker 1: a number of NFL owners and my friend is not
Speaker 1: a football fan, not even know the slightest thing. She's
Speaker 1: not even from this country. She comes back to me
Speaker 1: and she says, who is this guy Kaepernick keeper something? Oh,
Speaker 1: they were talking about him at this this It was
Speaker 1: like a you know, a little reception um and she
Speaker 1: said the things they were the kind of she came
Speaker 1: back completely appalled by the kind of race racist language
Speaker 1: being used to describe this person who she'd never heard of.
Speaker 1: She didn't know a different which I kind of always
Speaker 1: knew that NFL owners were bad in that sense, but
Speaker 1: that was like, Okay, this is a completely un This
Speaker 1: is a completely objective observer who's dropped into a candid
Speaker 1: situation with a bunch of owners and they are they
Speaker 1: are talking shit about college years after. The whole thing
Speaker 1: is not two years ago. This is not twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: two years ago, and they can't you know, they hate
Speaker 1: this guy, which I had not. I have to say
Speaker 1: I was a little surprise. I didn't realize the extent
Speaker 1: to which there was a continuing animus towards him. And
Speaker 1: just to remind listeners that in twenty sixteen, in the
Speaker 1: wake of several police shootings of black men, Colin Kaepernick
Speaker 1: decides during the playing of the national anthem during a
Speaker 1: game to nil, to not stand. And this is sort
Speaker 1: of triggers this this animus that you're describing. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: by the way, I mean, there's so many things that
Speaker 1: arens about the Colin kaepernthick in retrospect, it's not inherently
Speaker 1: disrespectful to the national anthem. To kneel is a respectful position.
Speaker 1: You're not on your cell phone, You're not like, you're
Speaker 1: not listening to music, You're like so like he's respecting
Speaker 1: the moment so much that he's using it to make
Speaker 1: what he believes to be an even more important statement.
Speaker 1: You know, I you speaking of a friend who had
Speaker 1: this experience recently with the racism of the NFL owners
Speaker 1: towards Kaepernick. In twenty seventeen, one of my students teaching
Speaker 1: at the Kennedy School. I have a lot of really
Speaker 1: influential students, and one of them was working for an
Speaker 1: owner and therefore made a recommendation that they talk to me.
Speaker 1: They're like, you know, my professor is a race whisperer.
Speaker 1: Maybe you guys can learn something from him. You're gonna
Speaker 1: be like, like, Harry, you're a juniors. That's this is
Speaker 1: my coming out moment. That's what I am revealing here.
Speaker 1: So you want to let you know that Harriet Edwards
Speaker 1: is not the only game in town anymore. So I
Speaker 1: meet with about four people, all of them African American men,
Speaker 1: and some are corporate, some are union, but all of
Speaker 1: them are earnest and thoughtful. And what I tell them
Speaker 1: is essentially, how absurd is it that we wrap American
Speaker 1: patriotism and militarism into sports athletic contests in the first place,
Speaker 1: And secondarily, um, what does it mean for an employer
Speaker 1: to require this genuflection to American patriotism as a condition
Speaker 1: of work? And that the best option going fall word
Speaker 1: is to either remind everyone that it is not a
Speaker 1: requirement to take a position that as an employer, while
Speaker 1: we have this tradition. It is not a condition of
Speaker 1: your employment or to stop it all together, because, as
Speaker 1: I said to them, I would never expect to go
Speaker 1: to my workplace, whether it's Harvard or some other university
Speaker 1: or college, and as a matter of daily ritual, I
Speaker 1: have to sing the national anthem. I mean, it's actually
Speaker 1: absurd when you think about it. Of course, it didn't
Speaker 1: actually happen that way. But what did happen was, for
Speaker 1: a time, as we all know, there was some general
Speaker 1: acceptance that some players would kneel, some players wouldn't kneel,
Speaker 1: and they sort of ride out the storm. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: we're going to take a break and we'll be back
Speaker 1: with more from Malcolm Gladwell, here's what I'd love to
Speaker 1: do with you, you guys, which is, if you're Colin
Speaker 1: Kaepernick and you're doing it again, do you do it differently?
Speaker 1: I'm wondering whether did he And I don't remember enough
Speaker 1: of the specifics of the case, but I'm wondering whether
Speaker 1: is there a way he could have explained himself before
Speaker 1: he took any action that would have made his protest
Speaker 1: more meaningful and more widely and less divisive. Yeah? Is he? Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You go ahead, No, no, no, and no, because well,
Speaker 1: well it's not it's not just my own politics. Um. Look,
Speaker 1: it was the early days of the Trump administration, and
Speaker 1: so everything we know now means that whatever we thought
Speaker 1: was the limits of white supremacist rhetoric, white nationalist organizing
Speaker 1: only matta ostasized since that moment. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, you know, what Trump was doing was
Speaker 1: like fire that bastard and stoking up the political base
Speaker 1: was really just speaking to millions of NFL white fans,
Speaker 1: both in the stadium and on television, who were feeling
Speaker 1: even more powerful and legitimate in their discomfort at best
Speaker 1: and hatred at worst towards Kaepernick. So I'm not sure
Speaker 1: there was any explanation that was a substantive, thoughtful, rich, factual,
Speaker 1: logical critique of policing that would have changed the outcome. Okay,
Speaker 1: second question for you, Khalil, since you're on a roller,
Speaker 1: does it make a difference if Kaepernick's really good? Yes,
Speaker 1: I do think it makes a difference. I think it
Speaker 1: makes a difference later, not initially, I think he would
Speaker 1: have suffered the stigma of being this radical, bad for
Speaker 1: the team's image, bad for the politics of sports and
Speaker 1: White America. But I think he would have gotten picked
Speaker 1: up shortly after the dust settle, maybe a year, maybe
Speaker 1: two years. But if he was considered one of the
Speaker 1: top five quarterbacks in the NFL, I think he would
Speaker 1: have gotten a job. So if Patrick Mahomes takes a
Speaker 1: knee in twenty twenty three, what happens? Hmm? This is
Speaker 1: funny because first of all, he works for a team
Speaker 1: that does the racist, fucking tomahawk chalk chalk, So so
Speaker 1: I think he might actually not make it out of
Speaker 1: the stadium alive. I mean, to be consistent with his
Speaker 1: own with his own team and stadiums politics. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: a good question. I mean, the NFL has already affirmed right,
Speaker 1: so that Roger Goodell, whether whether truthfully or just performatively,
Speaker 1: said Colin Kaepernick was right. We should have backed him
Speaker 1: up on this. So does that make a difference in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three amongst other owners and the politics today,
Speaker 1: It's hard to say. You know, you know, Malcolm mcclear.
Speaker 1: I've been thinking about this in terms of Drew Brees,
Speaker 1: the quarterback for the New Orleans Saints who recently retired,
Speaker 1: because he was in the news because he spoke at
Speaker 1: the Republican Congressional like gathering, and you know, thinking about
Speaker 1: like one man, I sort of always liked Drew Brees,
Speaker 1: you know, just as an idea. And if I had
Speaker 1: known this about him, you know, how would I have
Speaker 1: felt differently? Because I knew we were going to have
Speaker 1: this talk about athletes and politics and making a choice
Speaker 1: as an athlete of coming out for something is going
Speaker 1: to alienate a lot of people no matter what, no
Speaker 1: matter which side you come out on. So his his
Speaker 1: activism is actually on the conservative side. And then I
Speaker 1: was reminded that he spoke out after Colin Kaepernick took
Speaker 1: a knee, and initially he came out and said, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to respect the flag. I have parents who
Speaker 1: fought in grandparents who fought in World War Two. And
Speaker 1: he got all this backlash from fellow from his teammates,
Speaker 1: and he came back out again and said, listen, I
Speaker 1: spoke to my teammates and they corrected me. You know,
Speaker 1: they kind of schooled me. I learned something that idea
Speaker 1: that a community, you imagine a team of people talking
Speaker 1: of different races, and that they're they're kind of educating
Speaker 1: one another as a kind of. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: where sports is the metaphor for society. You think about
Speaker 1: that as society where like people can make change in
Speaker 1: that way. I like that part of it. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: were the Christian right historically stayed out of politics, right,
Speaker 1: They didn't touch it, and we this was something that
Speaker 1: in retrospect lots and lots and lots of progressive types lauded.
Speaker 1: We thought that was good. And then they got super
Speaker 1: involved in politics, and there was all manner of hand
Speaker 1: ringing and such from liberals who said, what are they
Speaker 1: doing to their religious purpose? They're calling their institutions their
Speaker 1: legitimacy by mixing God with with with Mammon. And Um,
Speaker 1: I'm wondering. So if I was going to play um
Speaker 1: devil's advocate here, Um, why wouldn't we think the same
Speaker 1: way about sports? What is wrong with the assumption that
Speaker 1: something is lost when someone takes sports and mixes it
Speaker 1: with contemporary political issues? This is the slavery avery argument argument? Right,
Speaker 1: Slavery Area is the head of the Olympic committee in
Speaker 1: sixty A. Right, who's American? Who's so racist that he
Speaker 1: gets the nicknames slavery? Slavery? Avery? Argumentum? Although I think
Speaker 1: that there's a there's a way of doing this with
Speaker 1: expressing it with more nuance, which is um. So let
Speaker 1: me go back to this book I'm writing. One of
Speaker 1: the things I'm really interested in why Tom Bradley fascinates
Speaker 1: me is that Tom Bradley is someone who grows up
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirties Los Angeles with a grievance and essentially
Speaker 1: waits fifty years to express his grievance. Super interesting. He
Speaker 1: basically hides it inside and says, Okay, I could I
Speaker 1: could stand up and I could make a big fuss
Speaker 1: about this in nineteen forty four in on Central Avenue.
Speaker 1: But I'm never going to be elected mayor of Los
Speaker 1: Angeles if I'm doing that. I'm never even going to
Speaker 1: get out of Central Avenue if I'm doing that. So
Speaker 1: what I'm going to do is I'm going to hide
Speaker 1: it inside, and I'm going to wait and wait and
Speaker 1: wait and wait and wait and wait and wait until
Speaker 1: I think it's appropriate to speak up. Now, he turns out,
Speaker 1: he waits until Rodney King to say anything. But and
Speaker 1: what's the specific grievance that he says? Remind us his
Speaker 1: grievances with the LAPD okay, because he becomes a police officer, remember,
Speaker 1: and spends the first half of his career as a
Speaker 1: police officer. And I, you know, a lot of what
Speaker 1: we're doing is we're asking athletes. The issue is not
Speaker 1: whether athletes or people in positions of cultural prominence use
Speaker 1: that platform in one way where or another for the
Speaker 1: good of their people or for society. I think everyone
Speaker 1: we're all in agreement they should do that. The issue
Speaker 1: is when should they do it and how should they
Speaker 1: do it? And I here's another of my little worries.
Speaker 1: One of my little worries is that we're way too
Speaker 1: focused on people speaking out immediately and not respectful enough
Speaker 1: of someone who might be playing the long game. The
Speaker 1: one thing we let people in positions of privilege do
Speaker 1: is play the long game. The white guys get to
Speaker 1: play the long game, right, They play the multigenerational game.
Speaker 1: And everybody's fine with that. Black guy stands up and
Speaker 1: wants to play a multigenerational game, and everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you've betrayed your people. Why have you said something? And
Speaker 1: you're twenty three years old, Like bullshit. Find me. Find
Speaker 1: me a privileged white person who is expected to speak
Speaker 1: out in a sophisticated political manner the age of twenty three.
Speaker 1: It does not exist. What I love about this, Malcolm
Speaker 1: is like my my love of mj of Michael Jordan.
Speaker 1: He's about to come out. He's gonna sell, He's gonna
Speaker 1: sell the Charlotte UH team and he is he's a radical.
Speaker 1: Take his two billion and give it to an HBCU
Speaker 1: and it's a new Michael society. But two quick things.
Speaker 1: One Malcolm too, you ask your a question about the
Speaker 1: Christian right. Um, I actually reject the premise of the question. Um,
Speaker 1: religion has always sad. Yeah, yeah, and so so you know,
Speaker 1: the social Gospel tradition obviously is from the left position.
Speaker 1: But there's never not been a time when religious leaders
Speaker 1: didn't care about politics and speak to it as such.
Speaker 1: The other thing is, you've now given me so much hope,
Speaker 1: so much anticipation, such a strong belief now that Sasha
Speaker 1: and Malia Obama are the generational change that we that
Speaker 1: we want to see. That the yes we can of
Speaker 1: Barack crou saying Obama of keeping that little angry black man,
Speaker 1: that that that Lucius alternate ego inside, keeping that angry
Speaker 1: black man inside all this time, even through all the
Speaker 1: shit of Donald Trump and the madness of this country,
Speaker 1: it's still inside. And what it's really about is his
Speaker 1: two daughters. They are multi generational. This reminds me of something.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to Harp on this point
Speaker 1: because I think it's a really important one. Years ago,
Speaker 1: when I was doing my book Outliers, I had this
Speaker 1: fascinating conversation with someone who had studied the rise of
Speaker 1: Jewish lawyers, and he made this really interesting argument. He
Speaker 1: was like, and it's the argument I make in the book,
Speaker 1: which is that was a three generation phenomenon. The immigrants
Speaker 1: came and worked in the garment industry, their kids became
Speaker 1: merchants of one kind another, and it was their kids
Speaker 1: who went to law school. So it was three generations
Speaker 1: to go to a public city college kind of law school.
Speaker 1: Not it was four generations to go to the ivating schools.
Speaker 1: And his he was making his argument about about black people,
Speaker 1: and he was saying, the mistake we make is when
Speaker 1: we judge the success of our inventions is we forget
Speaker 1: that even even the Jewish community in America was a
Speaker 1: four generation phenomenon to get to the upper uh ranks
Speaker 1: of the of the of and this is white people, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, at a time when there actually were highly
Speaker 1: functional public institutions helping lower middle class white people get ahead.
Speaker 1: So it's like the deck was stacked in favor of
Speaker 1: that group, and it was still four generations. And so
Speaker 1: let me give you another example. So I look at
Speaker 1: someone like Steph Curry and I see, uh, well, Steph
Speaker 1: is it is it We're at least we're I don't
Speaker 1: know about his grandfather, but at least his father del
Speaker 1: is like a guy who made a fortune in the
Speaker 1: National Basketball League, who had every So Steph grows up
Speaker 1: with every advantage in the world. And what we're now
Speaker 1: seeing from him, that level of maturity and grace and
Speaker 1: even at a very young age, is something that has
Speaker 1: that has got decades of roots to it, right. And
Speaker 1: maybe it's Steph's kids who are the ones who run
Speaker 1: for public office and who make a difference, who have
Speaker 1: the benefit of two generations of And that's why it's
Speaker 1: again another reason why and do that thing you just
Speaker 1: mentioned about MJ is real? Why do we care? Why
Speaker 1: should MJ have to speak up at twenty five? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'll just say there is room though for black conservatism.
Speaker 1: There is room for individual notions of capitalistic success, meaning
Speaker 1: that one way to interpret some of this behavior is
Speaker 1: that I don't have a social obligation. My individual success
Speaker 1: is a cruce to me and me alone. And maybe
Speaker 1: at best I do like the white guys do, which
Speaker 1: is to say, I'm going to give away a little money.
Speaker 1: It's going to be good for my reputation, but everyone
Speaker 1: else has to work just as hard as I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't I don't want to overread Michael Jordan's
Speaker 1: um choices here because the jury is still out. Yeah. Right,
Speaker 1: I would add the phrase right the words right now.
Speaker 1: I don't have a social obligation right now. Once you
Speaker 1: add right now, then it changes the whole kind of
Speaker 1: m valence of the of his choice. Yeah, Hey, Malcolm,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to end with a kind
Speaker 1: of playful social experiment and sort of pose a question
Speaker 1: the way you were posing to us. And and so,
Speaker 1: you know, even even the Colin Kaepernick energy and the
Speaker 1: NBA after George Floyd, you know, sort of embracing Black
Speaker 1: lives matter institutionally, which is a very different thing, maybe
Speaker 1: a fifth choice, you know, or it was sort of
Speaker 1: co opted by the institution but that that energy has
Speaker 1: has sort of waned it's past, and so we're in
Speaker 1: this moment right now, as you just said, like what's
Speaker 1: going on right now? And let's imagine, like we're three
Speaker 1: smartish guys, Um, if we could be a kind of
Speaker 1: Harry Edwards to a professional athlete right now, who would
Speaker 1: we pick what would be the protest thing we would
Speaker 1: want them to do? And you know what cause and
Speaker 1: why or wouldn't it be effective? Like can we each
Speaker 1: sort of imagine one? And I could even start, you know,
Speaker 1: since you guys are just posing this coming now. Okay,
Speaker 1: So so mine mine is John Morant, and I've been
Speaker 1: really fascinated by by sort of you know, he was
Speaker 1: suspended by the NBA because he flashed a gun, and
Speaker 1: you know, rather than rather than sort of criminalizing him,
Speaker 1: it was sort of addressed as kind of um, a
Speaker 1: mental health issue and sort of an information issue that
Speaker 1: it's sort of like, you know, the fetishizing of guns
Speaker 1: in the country, you actually have to sort of you know,
Speaker 1: get some counseling about this. That seemed really kind of
Speaker 1: like productive in a way, like like that that they
Speaker 1: would counter sort of this our culture around guns. Um.
Speaker 1: And I was like, man, what if this young athlete,
Speaker 1: this young superstar sort of took on the idea of,
Speaker 1: you know, of of changing our gun culture. And it
Speaker 1: seems it seems like it wouldn't work because he would
Speaker 1: in all the ways that you just said, Malcolm, like
Speaker 1: this young twenty year old a kind of like sophistication
Speaker 1: and the time he would have to put into it
Speaker 1: away from his craft, which is all encompassing. But it's
Speaker 1: like there is sort of this hopeless, hopeful aspect in it.
Speaker 1: I like that, actually, yeah, I mean that would be
Speaker 1: a productive Who's next? You are? You are? Yeah? All right,
Speaker 1: it's mine. I want when the NBA's collective bargaining agreement
Speaker 1: runs out, I want Lebron to stand up and say, guys,
Speaker 1: we're done, walk out of the room, start a new league.
Speaker 1: There's just no reason. You understand that, Like, there's nothing
Speaker 1: tying all of these players to the owners. It's bullshit.
Speaker 1: It's complete bullshit. You have a group of owners who
Speaker 1: are profiting massively off this game that they are basically
Speaker 1: doing almost nothing. I mean, in fact, they're probably actively
Speaker 1: thwarting it. So there's you. You don't think that if
Speaker 1: Lebron makes one phone call to his people at CIA
Speaker 1: or there and just say, Okay, help me out here.
Speaker 1: Let's find some arenas. Let's if eighty five percent of
Speaker 1: the players opt out of the NBA, the NBA ceases
Speaker 1: to exist. Let's start our own franchises, let's all take
Speaker 1: a piece of the action. Let's cut a new deal
Speaker 1: with the television networks. Like, I want to ask you this, Malcolm,
Speaker 1: because you chose something that is not is not necessarily
Speaker 1: fighting for larger social justice, but fighting for one's own
Speaker 1: labor rights? Does that? I sort of in my mind
Speaker 1: I make a distinction between those two. Yeah, Well, I'm
Speaker 1: going back to Khalil was mentioning William Roden's book. So
Speaker 1: if that's the problem, let's solve the problem. Lebron can
Speaker 1: do it. As far as I can tell, there's a
Speaker 1: circular leader, a lot more create ativity and leadership and
Speaker 1: intelligence in the player of community right now than in
Speaker 1: the owner community. So like it. Let's go. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: in a way, by by him being much older and
Speaker 1: more experienced and even at the tail end of his career,
Speaker 1: it seems much more likely they could have done it.
Speaker 1: The last time the CBA was up. A couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. I actually, Malcolm, I'm giving you big ups
Speaker 1: for that. I really like that suggestion, and I think
Speaker 1: I think taking back you're the man, You're the man
Speaker 1: to be the kind of like in your new role
Speaker 1: as the Air Apparent areawards. That's that's I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pass that on. Um Well, I think these are
Speaker 1: two fabulous suggestions, and two is good enough for now. Malcolm,
Speaker 1: we are it does not work like that, all right,
Speaker 1: all right, So here's here's mine. Here's mine. Here's mine.
Speaker 1: So I think Serena and Venus Williams the team up
Speaker 1: to fight fight climate change on the basis of putting
Speaker 1: an end to on labor practices in the fashion industry
Speaker 1: or the fast fashion industry, which is to say that
Speaker 1: the extractive way in which we are producing a shit
Speaker 1: ton of clothes that are not meant to last, that
Speaker 1: are clogging up the Earth's landfills. They have the platform,
Speaker 1: they have the capacity. I just think this is a
Speaker 1: really rich space for them to own since they're already
Speaker 1: in the fashion industry, and it could go a long
Speaker 1: way to dealing with some of the issues that are
Speaker 1: related to fast fashion. Yeah. Oh, this was really terrific.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Malcolm. We had a lot of fun
Speaker 1: talking to you today. Thank you, Malcolm. Thanks guys Man Khalil.
Speaker 1: It is so interesting that Malcolm is working on this
Speaker 1: book about Tom Bradley, los Angeles's first black mayor, and
Speaker 1: that even that that book, that story is related to
Speaker 1: our conversation about athletics and politics. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Malcolm in the podcast Legacy of Speed as
Speaker 1: obviously building this into a bigger story and this interesting
Speaker 1: framing about these choices that people make. Bradley obviously makes it,
Speaker 1: and so many of the people we talked about from
Speaker 1: Tommy Smith and others about exit voice or loyalty and
Speaker 1: thinking about yeah, thinking about the costs a voice, like
Speaker 1: when you stand up in protests, yep, a glad Wellian move,
Speaker 1: a glad Wellian move. Yeah. So one of the things
Speaker 1: maybe we didn't talk a lot about was the cost
Speaker 1: like when you do protests, and most people know about
Speaker 1: Colin Kaepernick, he takes a knee, there's there's this backlash
Speaker 1: and essentially doesn't really get to play in the NFL again,
Speaker 1: and he accuses and many people of the owners of colluding.
Speaker 1: So he's never signed that's right, And of course we
Speaker 1: learned something today, a little bit of breaking news about
Speaker 1: how the owners really feel about him. Yeah, but this
Speaker 1: isn't the first time, right. The long story that we
Speaker 1: explore today also includes Tommy Smith and John Carlos. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: most people don't know about the cost of what happened
Speaker 1: to them for protesting, you know, so they're kicked out
Speaker 1: of the off the Olympic team, they're sent home, and
Speaker 1: for the rest of their careers they suffer financially. They
Speaker 1: they are not able to flourish, even though they're two
Speaker 1: of the best track stars ever in the history of track.
Speaker 1: That's right, and in fact, I mean best I know.
Speaker 1: They actually don't ever have running careers past that point.
Speaker 1: Tommy Smith goes on to do some coaching, uh much
Speaker 1: later on. And John Carlos, interesting left I met in
Speaker 1: Harlem many years ago, you know, who was sort of
Speaker 1: still telling the story. He had a memoir come out,
Speaker 1: and we know, of course what happened to Muhammad Ali,
Speaker 1: so you know there are real cost to voice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was thinking too. You know, Malcolm says this thing
Speaker 1: to me earlier about um, you know, do we expect
Speaker 1: too much of athletes? And you know, it got me
Speaker 1: thinking about all of us, like, what do we expect
Speaker 1: from all of us, right, you know, in the face
Speaker 1: of injustice, whether we all have an obligation to say something,
Speaker 1: to do something, and that that athletes as their platform increases,
Speaker 1: whether whether they can do even more, whether they have
Speaker 1: more obligation and in some fundamental way, I still think yes.
Speaker 1: And you know, you know he said about you know,
Speaker 1: do we expect more from black athletes than white athletes?
Speaker 1: Maybe so, I don't think that's right, but but you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of what's going on in our country's it
Speaker 1: sort of falls on black athletes more. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: just have one final thought on this point. You know,
Speaker 1: when an athlete with a megaphone of platform, whether it's
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan or Lebron James or Serena Williams for that matter,
Speaker 1: is not it chooses not to use voice, it sends
Speaker 1: a powerful political market signal that the issue is actually
Speaker 1: not important, and people weaponize that silence to say, these
Speaker 1: other people are radicals and they're miseducating the public. This
Speaker 1: is not really an issue. So there are costs and
Speaker 1: real ones to how we move forward in a society.
Speaker 1: All right. So here's what we're gonna do. Any athlete
Speaker 1: that you just named, MJ Serena, anyone, we are going
Speaker 1: to give them a platform right here, they can come
Speaker 1: on our show and we will do this. The offer
Speaker 1: is out there in the world, that's right, open invitation
Speaker 1: to some of my best friends are all right, all right?
Speaker 1: Love you, love you man. Some of my best Friends
Speaker 1: Are is a production of Pushkin Industries. The show is
Speaker 1: written and hosted by me Khalil Gibran Mohammed and my
Speaker 1: best friend Ben Austin. This show is produced by Lucy Sullivan.
Speaker 1: It's edited by Sarah Knicks with help from Kishel Williams.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Amanda Kawang, and our managing producer is
Speaker 1: Constanza Gayardo. At Pushkin thanks to Leita Mulad, Julia Barton,
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Speaker 1: Our theme song, Little Lily, is by fellow Chicagoan the
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Speaker 1: give us a five star rating and a review and
Speaker 1: listen even if you don't like it, give it a
Speaker 1: five star rating and a review, and please tell all
Speaker 1: of your best friends about it. Thank you,