The NAACP’s boycott call is a wake-up moment for the American Black athlete | Howard Bryant

In a country where their rights are being attacked from all sides, it’s time for Black college athletes to utilize their power

Six years after the nation underwent a so-called “racial reckoning”, Black America is under comprehensive assault.

The assault comes from the country’s highest elected office, where the president has, from the first day of his re-inauguration, made clear his belief that it is the white people of the world who are the true victims of racial discrimination. He has codified into policy what many non-Black Americans of all political persuasions believe quietly in public and loudly among themselves: the accomplishments and positions of Black people are the byproduct of unfair workplace diversity initiatives and not the people in question’s talent, hard work, ambition. As it limits immigration to the United States from the rest of the world, the administration earlier this week announced plans to allow entry to an additional 10,000 white South Africans as an “emergency response” to anti-white discrimination. The New York Times reported this will cost taxpayers roughly $100m.

Howard Bryant is the author of 11 books, including The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism and Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America.

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