George Floyd: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says it is important for athletes to continue to speak out
Watch the award-winning Kareem: Minority Of One, an intimate look at Abdul-Jabbar's life as an athlete and social activist, on Sky Documentaries and On Demand
Thursday 4 June 2020 09:30, UK
NBA legend and activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says it is important for athletes to continue to speak out in the wake of the killing of George Floyd.
Speaking on an NBA Together webchat alongside former NBA player Caron Butler and American politician Mitch Landrieu, six-time NBA champion and all-time scoring leader Abdul-Jabbar said: "It is really important for athletes, especially those in African-American communities and communities of colour, to speak out because the young people in those communities look up to athletes as the people that set the tone and have the knowledge and courage to do what is right.
"They look upon athletes in a way that is just a little bit less than how they look at their own parents. So athletes are very important to the hopes and dreams of young people in those communities."
Abdul-Jabbar, whose social activism pre-dates his professional basketball career, chose to boycott the 1968 Olympics in the wake of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. More than 50 years later, he has been an important voice in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis on May 25.
"Most people do not recognise racism. Racism is everywhere in our country," Abdul-Jabbar said. "Have you ever been in a room with a lot of dust in the air and suddenly you shine a flashlight and all of a sudden you can see all the dust? Then you turn off the flashlight and you don't see it anymore. If we turn on the flashlight we can see the racist attitudes and institutionalised racism that throw everybody's tension up.
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"I think this is a moment that everybody can point to when an awakening took place. I hope people are now awake to how horrible institutionalised racism is and that it is a problem that needs to be fixed now, somehow. We have to start talking about it now. This is urgent. We can't keep putting it off."
During the NBA Together debate, former mayor of New Orleans Landrieu discussed the daily pressure placed on people of colour living in deprived American communities.
"If you are in a neighbourhood and all of those things are beating you on the head at one time - you're afraid of the police, you have no money in your pocket, you're living in a broken-down environment - you have to be super-human not only to survive but to have some kind of meaningful opportunities in your life," he said.
"Can you imagine these kids going to school every day? How can they think about learning? And when get out of school and go back to their neighbourhood, they are facing all of that difficulty too."
