Tanzina Vega: It's been four years since San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, first took a knee in response to police violence against Black people.

Colin Kaepernick: For me, ultimately, it's to bring awareness and make people now realize what's really going on in this country. There are a lot of things that are going on that are unjust, people aren't being held accountable for and that's something that needs to change.

Tanzina Vega: That message from 2016 resonated last night across the professional sports world when players from the NBA, WNBA, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, professional tennis, and more, decided against playing games in response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. Stars including LeBron James, Naomi Osaka, Mookie Betts, Elizabeth Williams, and others, released statements denouncing the shooting and talking about their decision not to take part in games. The reaction from players and broadcasters was swift.

Speaker 1: The consensus is to not play in tonight's slate of games, and to kneel, lock arms, and raise fists during the national anthem.

Speaker 2: I'll always remember this day and I'll always remember this team, just having my back.

Speaker 3: We're calling for justice for Jacob Blake and demand that all should be held accountable.

Speaker 4: We got this little guy right here that we see every day. His life matters. He needs to know that he can do what he wants to do whenever he leaves his house.

Speaker 5: As a Black man, as a former player, I think it's best for me to support the players and just not be here tonight.

Speaker 6: Being a Black man in Americans, it's not easy.

Speaker 7: We've seen this and all of our heroes constantly taken down. We understand it's not going to end but that does not mean, young man, that you don't do anything.

Tanzina Vega: Amira Rose Davis is an assistant professor of History and African American Studies at Penn State and co-host of the Burn It All Down podcast. Amira, thanks for being with me.

Amira Rose Davis: Thanks for having me back.

Tanzina Vega: Major, major change in the sports world last night. The WNBA actually took the lead on a lot of this activism. How do we explain what happened yesterday Amira?

Amira Rose Davis: Like you said, the WNBA has been leading the way for years in terms of kneeling, in holding pressors about police brutality, and really we see this has been building. As you mentioned, it's the four-year anniversary yesterday of Colin Kaepernick kneeling. Yesterday was essentially a strike across multiple platforms where something hit a tipping point. We have seen since the murder of George Floyd and some would last us like way Breonna Taylor's murder has been dealt with, that there has been a rise in athletic activism, a new wave that has been more acute, more poignant, and more decisive in action. I think that's one of the things that we saw last night.

Tanzina Vega: Many of these players, if there was an industry that was really trying to survive this coronavirus pandemic right now, sports tried to do everything it could in its power to make sure that their players from Major League Baseball to the NBA, are playing games. These folks have been quarantined. Some of them have come down with the virus themselves. How do you explain what happened in that context? Do we think that part of what happened here was the fact that these players are in a bubble that they're able to organize rather quickly because of the coronavirus?

Amira Rose Davis: Yes. It's a great question because I think that the effects of the virus have actually amplified the possibility of collective action and solidarity. Not just being in proximity together, but the time off from sports that we had in the spring. A lot of people communicate and talk and think through sporting structures and power dynamics. I think that that has also amplified this current moment where leagues you've seen, not only are trying to get people to return to sports and to get the games flowing again, but they also have had to deal with these corporate expressions of Black Lives Matter whether it's painting courts or putting jersey names on their jersey. I think one of the things that we saw last night was players are essentially saying, these performative actions were good, but they're not enough. Here we are, in this moment, in this country, in a pandemic, in the midst of a revolution and we can't act like business can go on as usual, and we can't be your entertainment to let you escape as viewers, as fans, because this has to stop.

Tanzina Vega: Most notably, I think we're also seeing a couple of things, broadcasters, including Kenny Smith, very emotional in talking about why he would not want to participate in his broadcast yesterday, white players supporting their Black colleagues as well. What do you make of all of that, the fact that this is really going beyond what Colin Kaepernick essentially started four years ago?

Amira Rose Davis: One of the things that I think about a lot is that in the history of the country, Black people have been absolutely fine to be accepted as entertainers, whether it's as athletes or singers, et cetera. Racism has actually built the platform on which they now stand and athletes harnessing that can act as both amplifiers and drivers of the conversation. I think that this moment, we can't discount the activists on the ground, the boots on the ground that has-- without that work, we wouldn't be here either. One of the things that athletes are able to do with sports is take that platform that's been built, take that one area in which Black bodies have been accepted or had the ability to get a foot in the door and say, "We're going to use this platform, we're going to amplify these concerns, and we're going to drive the conversation because you're watching us. Even if you don't want to hear our voice, we have actual power. We have power in the labor that we do and what we provide. We're going to harness that to make sure we're having a conversation that includes all of the inequities that we're talking about."

Tanzina Vega: I'm wondering if we know where the leagues stand on this? Some of these players, I imagine are breaking some agreement or contract as they do this. Do they have the support of their teams and their leagues?

Amira Rose Davis: Yes, I think it's something to keep an eye on, certainly under their CBAs in both the NBA and the WNBA, there's no strike language around resistance like you saw. Now, oftentimes, it's phrased around collective bargaining and so holding out in terms of changing revenue streams within the leagues, but it also would cover this. It'll be something to watch because I think the leagues are going to have to contend with that they've been giving lip service for the last few months towards Black Lives Matter. Now it's like, "All right, it's here. What does that support really look like?" I think that there's a lot of nervous executives. I think there's a lot of slack messages and meetings happening about how do we do this? How do we contain it? I think the way that power works in terms of sporting structures is that, athletic labor is such a threat to that, that I think the calculation is how can we support this and how can we also rein it or get it to a place that we can control it again? I think one of the things to keep our eye on is, in what ways do the players keep driving the conversation and in what ways does perhaps a production video or another statement or a league donation, become the performative action in replace of tangible requests? I think that is where we keep our eye on because those next steps are going to be crucial in terms of the standing of this movement.

Tanzina Vega: I'm watching this unfold and I can't stop thinking about Laura Ingraham's comments to LeBron James to just shut up and dribble and how far we have come from that moment. When you think about that, what does this tell you in the arc of activism among professional sports?

Amira Rose Davis: I return to those comments a lot, the shut up and dribble comment because I think it underscores that idea. If you have a racist reaction bingo card, one of the biggest things you'll see today still is a paradigm of that, like, "You're so rich. You're here to entertain us. That's all you're good for." I think it really underscores the idea that you're privileged to be in this position. You should just be grateful. You don't have a voice. You can't talk. Except, of course, two weeks ago, when a certain college athletes were saying they want to play then all of a sudden it was like, "You have to listen to players." You can see that it's really weaponized in political and in racist ways. I also think if you're looking at that grandeur, Dr. Harry Edwards would call this the fourth wave when Colin knelt four years ago. I think that we're in a new iteration of that, where there is more understanding of collective labor resistance, there's more understanding of solidarity. If you have one person, they get made rendered disposable very easily. Colin is blackballed. Craig Hodges before him. We have a long history of watching athletes become disposable when they're inconvenient, but you can't dispose so easily of an entire league. That solidarity aspect is really key and that's one of the things that is new about this moment is how collective this action has been.

Tanzina Vega: When we think about the bigger picture here, I mentioned earlier that this is happening with the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sports teams, professional sports have tried everything to get their teams back playing. I wonder if there's no season, if there are no fans, they're already losing ticket sales, Major League Baseball has cardboard cutouts of folks in the stands and there are no players. What does this do for sports at the bottom line, Amira?

Amira Rose Davis: That's a really great question. I think like so many things, COVID has forced us to re-examine systems and the status quo and so much of the reaction has been like, "Let's just get back to normalcy," but normalcy is gone. What professional sports look like going forward, I think is going to shift because of multiple things. What happens when you don't have fans that you're trying to protect, and then, therefore, especially the NFL, thinking about their fans as a shield for some of the disciplinary action they take against players who might want to be vocal? What happens when you remove fans from the equation? What happens when you realize that the athletes, the labor in this equation, are the most important part of your brand or your product? How does that shift what the power relationship, what the control looks like? I think, on the other hand, it's opening up avenues for other ways of engaging with sports. We've seen the WNBA have a huge ratings increase because they're on more platforms because they're partnering with Twitter and other media markets that perhaps are non-traditional versus cable or something like that. I think that it's going to really change some of the complexities of professional sports moving forward. We've seen athletes already start to articulate opting out whether it's to focus on racial justice initiatives that they were already into and the model of Maya Moore, who of course stepped away from the game to help Jonathan Irons get out of prison a year ago or many people who have said, "No, I'm not playing during a pandemic. I can't risk my health like that." I think that it's a shock to the system that has said winning over everything, sports must go on, et cetera. I think that we're in a moment where people are saying, "Does sports have to go out? At what cost?" I think that it's very interesting to see what will be rebuilt as we move through this moment.

Tanzina Vega: Amira, we've got less than a minute to go but I just wonder where we go from here. Is the NBA season over?

Amira Rose Davis: That's a great question. Again, very uncertain. We know that the Lakers and the Clippers have voted not to play. I think it has put it up in the air and I'm like, we all will have to wait and see.

Tanzina Vega: Amira Rose Davis is assistant professor of History and African American studies at Penn State and co-host of the Burn It All Down podcast. Amira, thanks so much.

Amira Rose Davis: Thank you.

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