The use of their place of prestige and power as a platform for political protest is nothing new for professional athletes. Possibly the most well-known instance of this was the 1968 Mexico City Olympic protest executed by American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos. During the medal ceremony for the 200 meter sprint Smith and Carlos, the gold and bronze winners, respectively, raised a single black gloved fist and held their heads down. Many perceived this as a black power salute, but the athletes later clarified that it was a human rights protest. According to the Washington Post, the athletes had also removed their shoes on the way to the podium to protest world poverty and wore beads and scarves around their necks to protest lynchings. These athletes had a message that they wanted to share, and they knew that the best time to do so was right then, with the eyes of the world watching them. With the international fervor around the Olympics, these men knew that this was the best way to reach the largest global audience.
Tommie Smith and John Carlos' protest at the
1968 Mexico City Olympics. (Time)
While this kind of global exposure was previously reserved for international events like the Olympics, modern day technology has allowed easier access to a larger audience. Modern day conveniences like television, the internet, and Twitter have allowed athletes a greater capacity to interact with their fan base, and subsequently has given them a platform from which to espouse themselves to political and social ideals and issues.
With the age of social media upon us, it is inevitable that athletes would harness this new technology to foster greater interaction with their fans. Lisa Koedrich, Twitter's global head of sports partnerships, explains that, "[s]ports are becoming borderless thanks in part to fans’ ability to follow along and connect on Twitter from wherever they may be... players have the opportunity to become global brands." Part of this ease of access to athletes is also ease of access to their personal and political beliefs, and many athletes have used social media to bring attention to issues they feel need to be dealt with. In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting in 2012, basketball star Lebron James tweeted out an image of himself and some teammates wearing their hoods up in the same manner that Trayvon was when he was shot. James included the hashtags "#Stereotyped" and "#WeWantJustice", showing that he felt the young man had been stereotyped for his appearance, and that he felt that Florida's Stand Your Ground law was not enough to attain amnesty for his killer. Lebron's use of the image as a metaphor for how it just as easily could have been these multi-millionaire athletes who could have been profiled because of their skin brought up some of the racial issues surrounding the case. In another case revolving around police brutality and race relations, New York Knicks star Carmelo Anthony took to Instagram in the wake of the 2016 Dallas Police shooting. The day after a sniper gunned down five police officers providing crowd control at a police brutality protest march in Dallas, Texas, Anthony posted an image from a 1967 meeting between prominent black athletes to discuss the Vietnam War. Anthony plead that much like the athletes in the photo, the athletic community must use their position of prominence in society to call for an end to any injustice that they see in society. This harnessing of social media has become a staple of the modern athlete's persona, and as New Yorker writer Hua Hsu posits, what makes the modern athlete so different from athletes of yesteryear is "their capacity to share more in a late-night Instagram post than a decade of carefully stage-managed, Nike-approved Jordan documentaries." This freedom has become one of the main ways that athletes have been able to voice their opinions.
The Miami Heat's protest in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting. (Twitter)
It's not merely social issues that athletes are using the new media to comment on, but political issues as well. In early 2017, Golden State Warriors star and Under Armor endorsee Steph Curry created controversy by voicing his displeasure with President Donald Trump. When asked to elaborate on Under Armor CEO Kevin Plank's comment that President Trump was an asset to the United States, Curry told an online reporter for the local Mercury News that he agreed, "if you remove the 'et' from asset". Curry's comments not only show a player using online media to voice their displeasure with a politician, but also touches back on Carmelo Anthony's Instagram post. By going against what Plank said, Curry was directly opposed to the viewpoint of his sponsor, but felt that he had to voice his opinion in spite of the possibility of losing an endorsement. Curry's comments seem to have not sat well with the President, as he later rescinded an invite for the NBA Champion Warriors, citing Curry's trepidation as a reason. When news of this broke, Lebron James tweeted out his distaste for the President and his decision, calling him a bum and saying that it was no longer an honor to visit the White House. Once again we see a major athlete harnessing social media to voice their opinion on an issue, this time political rather than social. In a true testament to the amount of reach that these athletes have, James' infamous "bum" tweet went on to become the most retweeted tweet from an athlete on Twitter for all of 2017.
Lebron James' infamous "U bum" tweet. (Sports Illustrated)
While athletes have been using their exalted status in society to attempt to bring about political and social change for decades, this process was greatly assisted by recent technological advancement. With the new forms of media like online news and social media, these athletes are able to reach a much broader audience at an almost immediate rate, allowing these pillars of society to work on their political activism at a level previously inconceivable.
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