Omkari Williams 00:20
Hello and welcome to Stepping Into Truth, the podcast where we have conversations on social justice issues and how we all get free. I'm your host Omkari Williams, and I'm very happy that you're here with me today. My guest today is Shaun Marq Anderson. Shawn is a global authority on sport and social responsibility. Shaun says that sport is a microcosm of society, a catalyst for conversations about business, politics, racial injustice, environmental sustainability, and other pressing social issues. Shaun researches these contemporary problems in the context of sport to determine the most effective strategies and methods to solve them. As a consultant, he has used his work to help renowned brands such as Nike, ESPN, and Major League Baseball on their social responsibility initiatives. Hi, Shaun, how are you?
Shaun Anderson 01:16
I'm great. How about yourself?
Omkari Williams 01:17
I am doing really well. I'm so happy to speak with you today. Because I love sports. And I love activism. So when you put the two of those things together, I'm a very happy person.
Shaun Anderson 01:30
I understand, appreciate it.
Omkari Williams 01:32
So let me start with this, because I think that for a lot of people, when they think about Black athletes, and they think about protest, they think about Muhammad Ali, or they think about John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympic Games with their gloved raised fists. But the fact is, protests by Black athletes started long before those people were on the scene. Can you talk about some of the history of Black athletes protesting?
Shaun Anderson 02:03
Yeah, sure. You know, I'm glad you brought that up, because so many people have this idea that the civil rights movement was the launching pad of sport and politics. But like I mentioned, it was well before that, and I even take it back to a few years after the Civil War, reconstruction. And the Kentucky Derby was established in the 1870s. And who else to ride these horses but the free Black men who ran the stables on these plantations. And so you have these Black jockeys, who, after about a decade or a little bit more, began earning the equivalent of what the millionaire athletes earn today. And so they were taking care of their families, you know, they were supporting themselves winning championships all over. And then we saw the Plessy versus Ferguson case, right of 1896. Separate but equal, which then began this elimination of these athletes out of that particular sport. To the point to where by the early 1900s, Black jockeys were obsolete. The white owners of those teams were like, Okay, no, we're tired of them winning. We want them to be in the background. We want to put white players in the foreground. And so sport and politics, in many cases was kind of formalized unbeknownst to those athletes during that time.
Shaun Anderson 03:31
And so then, you started to see the Harlem Renaissance, right, the socio-economic growth of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Then you also began to see a lot of Black intellectuals come into their fruition. You know, we saw WEB DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, to name a few. But then there was Jack Johnson, who, Muhammad Ali was like, you know, I'm gonna talk a lot of stuff, but this guy was crazy. You know, and Jack just wasn't necessarily a political person. But he was not afraid of white people. During that time he used to box in underground boxing events, win all the time and wanted to challenge the white heavyweight champion of the world, which at the time, of course, boxing wasn't allowing Black people to engage in the sport professionally. And so he would go around, even if it was out of the country for two years, to taunt, the current heavyweight champion at that time that, "we know the only reason why you got that title because you haven't fought me". He eventually got his shot, and won.
Shaun Anderson 04:43
And so Jack Johnson was a character. He walked around with gold teeth, with his furs, and his cars. He had a lot of girlfriends, many of them white. And then there was this law that was passed in 1910 called the Mann Act, that act said that you cannot transport white women across state lines in fear of having them engage in prostitution and other debauchery. Because Jack Johnson was then married to a white woman, and he went across state lines, he was arrested. And so you gotta serve jail time, or you're gonna lose your your heavyweight title. And so to avoid the jail time, he just fled the country for a few years. And so cut to later on in his life, he finally got back to the ring, but he was older, he wasn't fighting anymore, he finally got beat by the Great White Hope that many of the white promoters tried to establish back then. And so that was the case with Jack Johnson.
Then we have Paul Robeson, who a lot of people don't talk about, who also was during that time, and he was an athlete, an intellectual, was the highest rated student at Rutgers Universit, as a Black man during this time. And also went to Columbia University Law School, but couldn't get a job because of Jim Crow. And so we know about his history of activism, and he kind of served as the precursor to the civil rights movement.
Omkari Williams 06:13
Yes.
Shaun Anderson 06:13
So there was a lot going on, prior to the Civil Rights Movement and where we are today that needed to be talked about.
Omkari Williams 06:21
Absolutely, because if we don't know our history, we lose some of the deep respect for the ancestors and the work that they did. And I think we also lose our connection to that thread that keeps us going, even when times are really challenging. But someone I did not know about until I read your book, was this Black attorney, U.W. Clemen, who in 1969, filed a lawsuit against the University of Alabama and football coach Bear Bryant, who I mean, one of the great football coaches of all time, and his suit claimed that the university was purposefully denying scholarships to Black players. And this started a real big shift, would you talk about how that particular lawsuit really shifted things for Black athletes at the college level?
Shaun Anderson 07:22
As you mentioned, Bear Bryant, legendary coach considered, of course, one of the greatest college football coaches in American history, had that same issue. We don't want Black players in our establishment. And so eventually, and along with that lawsuit, you started to see some Black players play for other universities. And when the University of Houston, they came in and played the University of Alabama at the time, and mopped the floor, whether it was a bunch of Black athletes. And so it was a situation to where, much like the Jackie Robinson situation where a lot of people think that okay, Branch, Rickey was doing a service for humanity. But all he was just trying to do was win back the fan base from the Negro Leagues. And so he brought up Jackie Robinson.
So the same with this situation with Bear Bryant, I mean, the lawsuit was the catalyst to conversations on integration within sports, particularly college sports. But then when these Black athletes, these Black players started to show their superiority, Bear Bryant was like, oh, well, I need to change my philosophy and start the integration process. Now, we see what the University of Alabama is doing today. And we see who's on that roster. But that lawsuit sparked a national conversation about where we needed to go at that time.
Omkari Williams 08:50
The thing that I find so interesting, and you reference this in various ways in your book is, and this is just the nature of the United States, the nature of capitalism, is that ultimately, a lot of these changes just came down to money. Pure and simple.
Shaun Anderson 09:06
Yes.
Omkari Williams 09:07
If University of Alabama is getting beaten by majority Black teams, that's bad for their reputation that's bad for their bottom line. So they didn't make these changes out of the goodness of their hearts. They didn't make these changes, because they thought it was the morally right thing to do. They made these changes to be able to continue to compete in a realm that was becoming increasingly challenging for them, if they were not going to allow Black athletes to be part of their of their teams.
Shaun Anderson 09:40
Right.
Omkari Williams 09:41
I think it's important to remember that because we want to just be telling the truth and not ascribe either bad motives or really good motives to people when it's maybe not quite that cut and dried.
Shaun Anderson 09:55
Right.
Omkari Williams 09:56
And something that I've really thought about in terms of That is that there are areas of activism that are considered acceptable for Black athletes. And so Black athletes can compete, and then also speak up about these particular areas and still make money with their endorsements or whatever. Would you talk about how that all has sort of shaken out? Because in the 1980s and 90s, we didn't see a lot of Black athletes being activists.
Shaun Anderson 10:32
Yeah. Yeah. So you know, we take it to the time, right, that was the dormancy of activism, primarily because of the money, as you just mentioned. So we're talking about media rights, endorsements becoming a big thing in sports, which then boosted the salaries of the players, of course, what the owners can earn. And we'll be speaking about these owners here in a second. But it came a point to where, okay, these teams, these leagues, these owners, those who are in power, these commissioners, essentially, were saying that, okay, you should be happy, you should be satisfied that you're earning $5, $10 $15 million dollars a year, there's nothing for you to complain about. And if you get into the position of complaining, then you are out of this league.
For example, with Chris Jackson coming out of LSU a premier scorer probably would have been a Hall of Famer, he was able to stay in the NBA. You know, converted and got involved with the Nation of Islam, changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul Raouf, and led a bunch of silent protests in NBA games. One in particular is when the national anthem was playing. He got into his prayer pose and turned his back towards the flag to demonstrate his disdain for police brutality at the time. David Stern, the NBA Commissioner was like, Nope, you can't do that. You're done. And so within a few years, he was out of the NBA.
Shaun Anderson 12:05
So it was part not wanting to lose money, part not wanting to lose their careers. And a big example of that is Michael Jordan, who has been criticized heavily for not becoming involved in a lot of these conversations, which today he has. But there was this whole moniker by him saying that, well, Republicans buy shoes, too. So why basically, why would I cross the lines of any political party when I'm trying to sell this $200 shoe, which I couldn't afford as a kid coming up, but I wanted em.
Omkari Williams 12:36
Right.
Shaun Anderson 12:37
That's where we saw this dormancy. But I will say that we have the Black Lives Matter movement, and it's been moving forward for the last 10 years. We've seen the uptick of activism since 2013-2014. And even taking it to the college ranks, which speaks about the money again, when students at the University of Missouri, about eight, nine years ago, were complaining about the racism, the Black students were complaining about a lot of the racism that was going on on campus. They felt that what could boost their complaints would be to join forces with members of the football team, who sat with them, talked with them, and both the athletes, and some of those students went to administration and said, we've been having these problems for years, we need a change. We believe that the university President is not being an ally, we need something to happen. And so it went ignored until those athletes started to protest games, and said, We're not going to play until this President is gone. And within a week he was out.
Omkari Williams 13:50
I remember that. I remember that. And I was so impressed…
Shaun Anderson 13:55
Yeah.
Omkari Williams 13:55
…that such a young group of people were willing to take such a stand. I mean, these kids were risking their scholarships. They were risking their ability to potentially play in the pros. They were risking everything. It was really impressive. That actually leads me to another question, because so you had those students doing that back in I don't know, as you said, like 9-10 years ago, something like that. And you have the Black Lives Matter movement. And you have that actually seeming to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, to really catalyze the professional athletes getting involved on the ground in activism. Would you speak about how those two things intersected and why they intersected in such a powerful way at that point in time?
Shaun Anderson 14:52
Yeah, no. Catalyst. You're absolutely correct. Because the Black Lives Matter movement with the power of social media, of course, started off as a hashtag, and then eventually moved on into becoming a formalized organization. Then it became something global. And so, because we began to see the power of social media, we began to see the shift in society where organizations could no longer do what they want, without being held accountable by the court of public opinion, athletes saw the opportunity. Some of the earlier demonstrations were with the Ferguson, Missouri case. And when the St. Louis Rams demonstrated the Hands Up, Don't Shoot,
Omkari Williams 15:34
Yes.
Shaun Anderson 15:35
…you know, then we began to see police associations becoming involved in in them talking online and them saying that these players need to be suspended. And we saw the hoodies for Trayvon Martin. And we saw this continued growth until we got to 2016 with Colin Kaepernick sitting down and then eventually taken a knee. The Black Lives Matter movement what it did was, again, make this polarizing description of the issues in our society that are going on. It brought about the police cameras and being able to document certain tragedies that were going on in our society.
And I believe that it served as the momentum for athletes to create their own sport justice movement, where they began to use their platform to talk about social issues, where they began to talk about things such as equitable education, voting rights, criminal justice reform. We began to see athletes talk about how they're connecting with grassroots and nonprofit organizations on certain issues. And so the Black Lives Matter movement served as that again that precursor, that that Paul Robeson, if you will, to what we're seeing today. And it hasn't been a perfect movement. But it has been one that has shifted us now from protests, to now conversations on policy reform.
Omkari Williams 17:06
And I think that's really important, because as much as I wish that we didn't have to wait for policy reform, that is the reality of things in the United States right now. And these athletes have potentially a lot of power. I mean, the research I did said that right now, approximately 81% of NBA players are black. In the NFL, it's approximately 70%. Those are huge numbers. These people have massive platforms, they have a lot of money, they have a lot of connections. And that they're finally using some of that power to work for racial equity and Justice has got to be something that the owners can't ignore. I mean, we just had the Super Bowl, and we had two Black quarterbacks playing in the Super Bowl that 10 years ago was not a thing. So in a relatively short amount of time, there's been a lot of pressure on major sports, to be more equitable in their hiring practices. And that communicates out into the communities. But at the same time, you'll have someone like Laura Ingraham saying to LeBron James, "shut up and dribble" when James decides to speak up about racial injustice. So how are how are athletes sort of navigating this? And where do you see the sports justice movement going in the next five years?
Shaun Anderson 18:48
So again, what I've seen, what I've experienced, from whom I've talked to, many athletes are taking a lot of time during their offseason, during the time where they even have some time during the season, to connect with experts in the field, you know, so maybe sociologists, to mental health experts, psychologist, business leaders, on understanding the data and the facts behind the issues that they are concerned with. Kyrie Irving, for example, who's been in the media with a lot of good and bad right. At one point during the regular season decided to take a break after another police shooting, to go to my home state of Arkansas, and talk to people there. Learn the history about the Little Rock Nine, go into the African American Museum that was there to try to gain an understanding at least of what has been done in the past. What laws that were passed beyond the significance of the Voting Rights and the Civil Rights Acts and try to maneuver from there. I think that that is something that many of the athletes are doing nowadays.
But within the next five years, I think the sport justice movement will usher in a platform to where there are more minority owners. Now, I'm not going to say that they're going to be twenty in the next five year. There may be two or three more across the board, relative to all sports leagues. But I think that with those numbers that you've mentioned, with the percentages of Black players in these major sports, there's going to be more moves to hiring more people of color in general manager positions and team operations positions, presidents of teams positions, along with head coaches and such. But it's going to take a massive push to change the system in ownership. Because that was this conversation I heard DeMaurice Smith explained, he's the NFL Players Association, Executive Director, and he's an advocate for players. He said that a couple of years ago, the NFL wanted to go from 16 to 18 games. But they did not want to play the players for those two extra games. And they wanted to get rid of player pensions, and they wanted to renegotiate media rights. Right?
Omkari Williams 21:16
Y'all should see my face right now.
Shaun Anderson 21:19
And they wanted to do this, because it was more of a thing of, well, you're gonna get the exposure to get endorsements and all that stuff. Think about Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys, 80 years old, billionaire, he hasn't left the team since he bought it. Probably gonna pass it down to his kids when he can't do it anymore. But the athlete that came through for a good six, seven years is chewed up, you spit them out?
Omkari Williams 21:46
Yeah.
Shaun Anderson 21:46
That's the cycle. And so when you have representation in that ownership booth, that can empathize and relate to who you are as a player and who you are as a business person beyond your time as a player, you know, we'll start to see that change. But I'm predicting that's probably going to take another decade or even more.
Omkari Williams 22:08
First off, I'm just stunned that they would think that people would actually give up rights that they had for some fantasy of, oh, this will be great exposure for you, these people don't need more exposure, they've got plenty of exposure, and you're trying to convince them to work two more games for no more money. That's never gonna fly.
Shaun Anderson 22:30
Right.
Omkari Williams 22:30
But you know, all right, I suppose you can give them credit for trying, I guess. But something that it makes me think about is something I had heard about and then I read again, in your book, which was, obviously people know about brain injuries and football, and this is a big conversation. And one of the things that I found really interesting is that there was actually a whole idea that somehow Black athletes were cognitively less well developed than white athletes so that when Black athletes had traumatic brain injuries, and were looking for compensation from the league, the league started at a lower baseline for them. They were like, “well, you weren't that smart to start with so we're gonna give you less money”. I honestly, when I first heard that, I thought, well, that cannot possibly be true. They cannot possibly have done that. But they did. So would you talk about that and how, I'm not talking about 50 years ago. I'm talking about a couple of years, we're talking about something that is contemporary, would you talk about how the Black athletes are sort of pushing the envelope on that kind of insidious racism that still exists in this very well compensated rarefied world.
Shaun Anderson 24:00
Yeah. That article came out, you know, as a culmination of all of the years right that the NFL tried to even hide his problem in the first place. You know, and that also coincides with teams who did not want to draft Black quarterbacks years ago, because cognitively they thought that they were not there, along with your Tom Bradys and Aaron Rodgers of the world. That's the thing again, that is a successful part of the sport justice movement is to, you know, talk about that article and push back against it because as we could see, there are so many athletes also who are crossing over in the business world, even during their playing careers who are establishing that narrative that they don't go broke after the game that they are doing several different things that they are opening schools.
You know, LeBron James opened his school. Jalen Rose has a school, former NBA player as well. And so those individuals will talk about owning successful food franchises, you know, outside of the game that speaks volumes to eradicating that whole narrative that cognitively, you know, like you say they started at a lower base. And the NFL had to quickly come out with this PR ploy of, you know, oh, well, we we're not going to accept this anymore. We're going to fire this doctor who came up with this whole day and all this stuff. But again, that speaks to the relevancy of this revitalized athlete activism, because it isn't just talking about police brutality and criminal justice reform, which are still things that we need to talk about, of course. But now we're talking about athletes and mental health.
Omkari Williams 25:44
Yes.
Shaun Anderson 25:44
Athletes and community development, how can we use our platform to build up these communities and try to stop gentrification? And it's showing that the brain behind the brawn, if you will.
Omkari Williams 25:56
Yeah. And I think that there's often a misconception that athletes aren't particularly intelligent. And that's just not true. I mean, they're no more or less intelligent than anybody else in society. Some are really, really smart. And some aren't, as is just the norm for everyone. But the willingness of owners to fall into ideas and behaviors that reinforced stereotypical negative notions of athletes of color has really been something that the athletes have had to push back hard on, because I'm pretty sure Laura Ingraham wouldn't have told Tom Brady to shut up and throw, okay, that would not have happened. It is definitely the intersection of sports and race that makes people think that that kind of thing is okay to say, and okay to think and even correct to think.
And you referenced in your book, you quote Nelson Mandela, who said this in part, he said, "...sport has the power to change the world. It is more powerful than governments in breaking down racial barriers. And it laughs in the face of discrimination". And I just love that quote so much, he's not wrong. Sports. It's an equal opportunity realm for people from small children to grown adults. And when we engage in that place, it's hard to hate up close as people say. And so even just the playing of sports, diminishes the level of racism diminishes the level of bias that we experience in this in this society and in societies around the world. And you suggest that there are four tenets that can be used to articulate the purpose of the sports justice movement, would you tell us what those are?
Shaun Anderson 27:55
Yeah, so you know, when we think about the sport justice movement, we're talking about things that have actually latched on to what the United Nations has put out relative to sports. Because soon after Nelson Mandela's speech, Archbishop Desmond Tutu went to the United Nations and said we need to recognize, look at sport, and see how we can build our society. So we're talking about these tenets of, of course, diversity, equity, and inclusion, we're talking about overall human rights, the ending of poverty, and homelessness, these are the things that even the United Nations sort of led the charge for with sport and social change. And we're talking about community development, through sport.
Shaun Anderson 28:41
So I'll give an example of these. In Los Angeles. When the St. Louis Rams came back to LA, their whole focus was to build SOFI Stadium, which is out now. There are so many people in the Englewood community who were protesting this because they were saying that we don't want increased traffic, we don't want all this pollution. We don't want to move out of our communities, and we don't want to pay the taxes for the stadium. And so the owner, Stan Kroenke, was like, Okay, well, we will at least pay for the stadium where you don't have to provide any type of tax payments for it. Okay. But now that the stadium is there, a house that was selling for $180,000- $200,000 has now shot up to $800,000.
Omkari Williams 29:29
Right.
Shaun Anderson 29:30
And so, now, the Los Angeles Clippers are building their new arena right across the street. And with them, they're saying, okay, then we will build the first carbon neutral arena, carbon free arena, is going to be the most environmentally friendly arena on the planet. We are going to invest so much into the community, so on and so forth. But we think about again, the situations in like Flint, Jackson, Mississippi, all of those things are great. And they're well said, but what is the direct impact of these stadiums and how it actually positively impacts these communities. Because as of today, there is no substantial evidence that says that any new arena that ccomes into a community, in which most likely they're probably in a low income community, how it positively affects the community, there's there's no track record, no trace, other than the fact that oh, you can just come here because it's entertaining.
And so the sport justice movement, is a representation of our society, the things that are going on. But how, again, we can use sports, to combat a lot of these issues, because a lot of people don't think about sporting arenas, and gentrification. A lot of people don't think about the DEI space with teams that barely have any Black folk or people of color in the front office. We just had the issue in Florida where the hockey the NHL was wanting to have the all star game there. But because they were talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, the governor of Florida was like, No, you can't come here. So NHL had to drop what they were trying to do. And so again, the movement has ebbs and flows. But that's the way that it's progressing.
Omkari Williams 31:24
Yes, we are almost out of time. And I need to make sure that I get you to give us three things that people invested in supporting the sports justice movement can do to make an impact directly.
Shaun Anderson 31:40
Yeah, so one thing is a lot of athletes are really pushing to talk to local government officials about certain issues. For example, you have Quran Butler, who former NBA All Star turned Miami Heat assistant coach, who is doing a lot with criminal justice reform in the state of Connecticut, you know, of course, where he went to play college basketball. And so, you have other former athletes who are becoming the liaison in their community development arm of professional sports teams. It will be wise to reach out to them to talk about the issues in the local community so that they can actually come in and try to see and put something towards that. That's one thing.
The Sport justice movement, again, is also creating larger conversations on policy reform and policy conversations, which I'm with you. It's hard for me to sometimes wait for something to come formalized to make up make a statement in our society. But that's the conversation as well.
And lastly, I would like to give credit to the WNBA because they actually created now the conversation of how players can engage in ownership. You know, we have Renee Montgomery, who went against her former teams owner. That owner did not like the Black Lives Matter movement, got that owner ousted, and her and her team bought that team. Yep, they did. And so no other leagues has done that type of accomplishment, high profile or not. And so that's a big move towards the economic empowerment of athletes. And that, again, is what the sport justice movement has brought about.
Omkari Williams 33:28
Wow, thank you so much. I'm such a sports nerd. I love sports so much that I could have this conversation all day. I really appreciate you're shining this very important light on this subject. Because these are people with enormous power, enormous reach. And if we can listen to their message and then take it into our own communities, we have an opportunity to make a difference right where we are. So thank you so much, Shaun. I'm really grateful that you took the time.
Shaun Anderson 33:59
No, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Omkari Williams 34:01
To quote Nelson Mandela, again, sport has the power to change the world. Supporting the goals of the sport justice movement is one way of moving the needle forward towards the world we want to see. Paying attention to the intersections matters. Raising our awareness and our voices to advocate for a more just and equitable world matters. I hope that this conversation inspires you to use your voice in support of equity in sports as an aspect of overall social change. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back with another episode of Stepping Into Truth very soon. Until then, remember that change starts with story. So keep sharing yours.