On Tuesday, Lauren Holiday, a former standout USA soccer midfielder and forward and husband of Pelicans guard Jrue, shared a harrowing and terrifying story of an experience the couple had with racism. Holiday’s penned a story for The Player’s Tribune detailing how Jrue was racially profiled and how they had remained silent on the matter at the time but were choosing to speak up now in the wake of the worldwide protests.
While the entire piece is well worth a read, the most noteworthy section involved Jrue being subjected to racism by law enforcement. Lauren and Jrue’s sister, also named Lauren, were driving home when they were pulled over by police near their home. With neither having their drivers license, Jrue offered to bring them from their house, which led to the following events:
“A few minutes later, Jrue (with his dad) pulled into the parking lot. He immediately stepped out of his car, and calmly approached us with our licenses in hand.
I’ll never forget what happened next.
They handcuffed him.
No, seriously: Even though the officer knew in advance that Jrue was my husband, and that he was coming to the scene, and why. Even though no one had explained to us why we had even been pulled over in the first place. And even though Jrue could not have been more careful, or more deferential, in how he made his approach. All the cop saw was this large black man getting out of a car.”
A tense situation over the next 15 minutes was eventually defused after a second cop arrived on the scene. The couple, though, had chosen not to share the story until now, which Lauren apologizes for at the end of the piece.
On Thursday, Jrue had media availability with the Pelicans over a video conference call and discussed how he felt about his wife sharing their story.
“Extremely proud. To be able to put herself out there and express how she feels firsthand. I think when I first read it, I thought she was going to try to tell it through my eyes, persay. Like kind of what I saw or what she saw through my eyes. But I think how she described it and how she saw it through her eyes and how it made her feel, it really hit my heart.
“It really made me feel like, which I already did before, but my wife is a beast. I have the best wife in the world to be able to go through these social things together and for her to understand my side and even the culture that I come from. Again, I’m extremely proud and happy and glad the article turned out really, really well.”
Jrue Holiday has gained a reputation of being a patient, soft-spoken player that often keeps to himself. Lauren discusses that very fact early in her Player’s Tribune piece. But the family is the latest to step out and step up as the Black Lives Matter movement continues across the globe.
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