In an emotional and honest message to the NBA community and the populace at large, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said the George Floyd tragedy made him feel “embarrassed as a white person,” and challenged white people to drive change and help improve the country.
Popovich reflected on how he felt when he saw the video of Floyd’s death in police custody last month, and compared the moment to a lynching seen in history books. Popovich urged white people to help change the world by calling out injustice and racism “no matter what the consequences.”
“In a strange, counterintuitive sort of way, the best teaching moment of this most recent tragedy, I think was the look on the officer’s face. For white people to see how nonchalant, how casual, how just everyday-going-about-his job, so much so that he could just put his left hand in his pocket, wriggle his knee around a little bit to teach this person some sort of a lesson — and that it was his right and his duty to do it, in his mind.
I don’t know. I think I’m just embarrassed as a white person to know that that can happen. To actually watch a lynching. We’ve all seen books, and you look in the books and you see black people hanging up on trees. And you are amazed. But we just saw it again. I never thought I’d see that, with my own eyes, in real time.
It’s important the we as white people – because I think, nothing’s going to happen, we have to do it. Black people have been shouldering this burden for 400 years. The only reason this nation has made the progress it has is because of the persistence and patience and effort of black people…. It’s gotta be us, in my opinion, that speak truth to power, that call it out no matter what the consequences.”
“It’s got to be us that speak truth to power, that call it out no matter the consequences. We have to not let anything go. Our country is in trouble and the basic reason is race.”#SpursVoices pic.twitter.com/uTyOIzGnTg
— San Antonio Spurs (@spurs) June 6, 2020
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