Jemele Hill hailed the ongoing sports walkouts in support of Black Lives Matter but also condemned the overall lack of progress over racial injustice on the 57th anniversary of the iconic, civil rights movement’s March on Washington in 1963.
On Friday afternoon, The Atlantic contributor appeared on Deadline: White House, where Nicolle Wallace marveled at the spiraling displays of solidarity with BLM protests from several professional sports leagues. The MSNBC host then noted an insightful tweet from Hill that captured how rapidly the nation’s conversation on race has been moving.
“You said the NBA season might be canceled because of racism not Covid. Think about that. And it really makes you stand up and appreciate how big this moment is,” Wallace said.
“I think this is why you saw the Milwaukee Bucks engineer this movement that we’ve seen over the last couple of days among athletes across all sports,” Hill explained. “Some sports that, had you told me, Nicolle, that Major League Baseball, which traditionally is a little more conservative in terms of the mentality, would have gone as far as the [New York] Mets did, leaving a Black Lives Matter t-shirt right there on the field, making such a symbolic gesture. I would have told you, you were crazy. That should let people know where we are in this moment about how much it has shaken this country.”
Hill pointed out that sports remains one of
“Sports is the one thing that mashes together people of different ethnicities, genders, across the economic landscape and so it becomes a movement quite easily when you have a unifier like sports,” Hill said. “So the reason that I tweeted that is that I wanted people to understand just at the breaking point that we’re at. The NBA players decided not to play because they’re tired. Black people across the board are tired. They’re exhausted.”
“We’re having some of the same conversations that Martin Luther King Jr. and many civil rights leaders were having 50 or 60 years ago with today being the 57th anniversary of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” Hill added. “You listen to that speech and realize we’re in the same place. Yes, there have been advancements and there has been progress, but the fact that we’re still in the place where Black people have to beg this nation to respect our humanity. That just says it all.”
Watch the video above, via MSNBC.