Mondays with Mike: Don’t stick to sports

I hope you’ll watch it.

After NFL player Colin Kaepernick famously took a knee to protest police abuse of Black people and broader racial inequality, some fellow athletes spoke out in support. A lot of people responded by saying “Stick to sports.” That always happens to sports figures who speak up about things outside of the sports realm. (A Fox commentator once admonished LeBron James, “Shut up and dribble.”)

Same thing went for a lot of sports media. Jemele Hill lost her job at ESPN for speaking out. WSCR, the local leading sports channel once featured Dan Bernstein (a white guy) and Jason Goff (a black guy). They used to dive right into the intersection of American society and sports. I found it enlightening and spontaneous and honest. The then-ownership of the station disagreed. Goff was fired, Bernstein was matched up with a new (white) partner. “Stick to sports,” they said.

Fast forward. WSCR has new ownership. Bernstein is still on, solo from 9 a.m. to noon, and getting after it. From noon to 2 each day, Laurence Holmes has been dishing out his viewpoint as a Black man (the only Black host at the station) in addition to talking sports, or what little about actual sports there is to discuss. It’s actually been some of the best, most thoughtful, sometimes uncomfortable coverage I’ve seen or heard in any medium.

Since our move to Chicago, I’ve learned more about the Black American experience on a barstool talking to friends than I learned in elementary, middle and high school combined. That was the era of “Slavery ended with the Civil War, and so did racism. Please play along.” Hell, I didn’t know what Reconstruction and Jim Crow were until college. I’ve learned a lot about what I’d call a sort of passive racism. Which is to say, you don’t have to be a cross-burning KKK member to be part of the problem.

In sports, that can mean that as a white general manager, you might see in a potential first round draft pick a younger version of yourself. Someone with similar background, someone you can relate to without any special effort. And that can affect decisions. Example: the Chicago Bears drafted quarterback Mitch Trubisky (white) ahead of Pat Mahomes (Black, just won the Super Bowl) and Lamar Jackson (Black, electrifying and revolutionizing the NFL). Trubisky is fighting for a job when the games start back up. Maybe it was just a case of bad scouting, or maybe it’s the Bears being the Bears, but it sure makes you think.

A point of pride as a White Sox fan is that its owner has pushed diversity in front office management and managers in his organization. The current Executive Vice President is a Black man, Ken Williams. He previously served as General Manager of the White Sox, and he’s the exec who assembled the 2005 World Series winning team. He is Black, one of a very few such execs in baseball (Marlins owner Derek Jeter the most notable).

Williams has always been self-assured and very executive-like, cool and calm, sometimes to the point of cocky. I’ve never heard him, until now, speak about being Black. Being vulnerable. In baseball. In life.

Last week he sat down for an interview that turned into something of a therapy session—for him and for viewers like me. I implore you to watch it. It has nothing to do with sports, it has everything to do with American life and the role race plays in it.

Williams has a fascinating background. His Godfather is John Carlos, one of the two Olympic athletes who raised the fisted Black Power symbol when they received their medals at the 1968 games in Mexico City. (They were told to stick to sports way back then.) Williams’ biological mother was in the Black Panthers. Williams spent his early years in Oakland, but the family moved to San Jose when his father successfully sued the city fire department to get a job as a fire fighter.

I can’t do the interview justice. It’s about a half hour, but it’s worth every minute.

And it emphasizes a phenomenon that I’ve experienced since the Minneapolis murder: Black people are feeling freer to talk about what they’ve experienced. They’ve been given license to not put my comfort with them in front of their own experience.

Williams projects pain, anguish and utter relief at being able to talk about his experience. I have the distinct feeling that he, like our Black barstool fans, are feeling freer to be honest.

Because, at last, they feel like white guys like me have their backs.