Lincoln Riley: ‘All lives can’t matter until the black lives do, too, and on an equal playing field’

The world of social media was flooded on Tuesday with all black pictures for a Blackout Tuesday movement. That included Lincoln Riley.

The world of social media was flooded on Tuesday with all black pictures for a Blackout Tuesday movement.

Everywhere you checked on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook had it. This also includes the head coach at the University of Oklahoma.

OU is located in a primarily republican state and many of the students that go to the University of Oklahoma are from the state and the state of Texas—another primarily republican state.

Lincoln Riley joined in on the social media movement Tuesday, using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter for his tweet.

The conversation between black lives matter and all lives matter is dependent on which side of the aisle you sit on in our country’s current climate. In Oklahoma and Texas, the difference between the two can be widely felt on social media.

For Riley, it didn’t matter what anyone thought. Here is his full quote on why he chose to use the hashtag during a zoom conference call with media on Wednesday.

“Because it’s a personal belief of mine. You’ve seen it said a lot of places: All lives do matter, but the incidents here of all the different things that have gone on between law enforcement and specifically black males has highlighted that. People have said it very well and maybe better than I can say it: All lives can’t matter until the black lives do, too, and on an equal playing field. That’s something I totally agree with. Like I said, I was raised in a household that none of that matters and none of that should ever determine a person’s opportunities, a person’s ability to feel safe in a community—all of that should be based on how hard you work and how often when you have those choices in life, that you make the right one versus the wrong one. And I think if you are a person that does that and makes the right choices and works your tail off, then you ought to have the same opportunities that anybody else should. I know that’s not a reality for some people. That was my inner belief. Again that’s not something that’s done because I coach a football team that has a lot of young black males on it or has staff that has black males on it—that has nothing to do with it. It’s having been on football teams, been in those locker rooms. I’ve seen how awesome it can be when everybody takes an approach of, ‘we’re all on the same playing field, we’re all equal,’ and how beautiful that is. I think being in those situations for the majority of my life has only made me appreciate more how awesome and how much better life is when we don’t worry about the color of skin or any other factors and we treat people the right way and people have opportunities based on , like I said, the work you do and the decisions you make.”

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