Tag: John Thomas

How should Americans address the issue of systemic racism, how can we change? John Thomas: It’s such a heavy and complex issue that goes deeper than even we all know. As Black people in this country, the systemic oppression and the trauma that was associated with the generations of our family members, knowing that research and studies have been done on the trauma and how that ultimately effects [and] really changes the DNA of the people that are traumatized. When you start to call those things into attention, you start to think about what that means. Then you start to understand systematically—with local policies such as redlining, blockbusting, and what that means for communities just based upon not being able to receive the type of loans that are necessary—it has an effect on the individual, which then ultimately spills over into the family, and this has been happening for years.

John Thomas: If the coronavirus never happened, if the NBA playoffs were still going and all sports were happening as normal, I guarantee the killing of George Floyd would have been swept under the rug like all the other killings and we never would have taken such a strong stance. So in getting closer with my family, my colleagues, my community, and by having such a passionate stance around issues like this—and even realizing that I, like so many others, was ultimately a part of the problem not due to wanting to be but due to the busyness of our lives—it caused us all to take pause and I’m very thankful. If you think about our Earth as a whole, it got a chance to breathe a little bit with cars not being on the road and humans damaging the world like we do. It was the best thing that happened. And in my lifetime, I’m certainly glad that it’s here. I don’t want to take away or marginalize those that were sick and suffered. And certainly my heart goes out to those that lost loved ones. I don’t want to take that away, but when you think about the medical picture of what this means to society, the timing was right.