Create A Forum Installed
Tom Brady was happy to talk politics until he wasn’t.The Make America Great Again hat in his locker, the flippant endorsement of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Only when those ties became inconvenient did Brady decide he wanted to “stick to sports,” and that he preferred to be a beacon of positivity rather than delve into society’s thorny ills.How mighty white of him.Brady’s ability to enter and exit the debate at his choosing, to shield himself from accountability, is the height of white privilege. As this country grapples with the far reaches of systemic racism, look no further than Brady, for whom the expectations, and allowances granted, will always be different.“Whiteness is the benefit of the doubt,” said David Leonard, author of "Playing While White: Privilege and Power on and off the Field." “When Tom Brady says, 'I was just given the hat,’ or 'He’s just a friend of mine,’ or when he skips the White House and says, 'I had a different engagement,’ he gets the benefit of the doubt. He gets to be an individual....Brady has had the chance – several, in fact – to clarify or walk back his comments and has chosen not to. At the Super Bowl in 2017, three days after Trump’s Muslim ban took effect. On Howard Stern's show last spring, when Trump was already beginning to sow lies about the election.And yet again this week, less than a month after a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that was incited by Trump.Instead, Brady has been allowed to divorce himself from it while Black athletes are made to own their views in perpetuity.There is no end in sight to Colin Kaepernick’s blackballing, even though his protests to bring attention to police brutality of Black and brown people have proven to be an alarm we should not have ignored. WNBA players had one of their own owners turn on them because they had the audacity to say “Black Lives Matter” and amplify the stories of Black and brown women killed by police.“I’m not sure how to respond to hypothetical questions like that,” Brady said Monday when asked if he feels he’s gotten a pass. “I hope everyone can – we’re in this position, like I am, to try to be the best I can be everyday as an athlete, as a player, as a person in my community for my team and so forth.“So … yeah. Not sure what else.”Even Brady’s aversion to talking about politics or current events is itself a form of privilege....“The follow-up question of, 'I’m here just to play football,' is 'Well, who’s afforded that luxury? Who’s allowed to see sports as this apolitical space of distraction, of pleasure, of fun?’ ” Leonard said. “Seeing sports and living sports as an uncontested space is the privilege of whiteness. It’s the privilege of being a man. It’s the privilege of being a heterosexual athlete."That is a luxury that Black athletes and other marginalized and disempowered athletes have never been afforded, inside and outside of sports."