Tag: racism

Asian American Olympians and Olympic hopefuls speak out against anti-Asian hate

Asian American Olympians and Olympic hopefuls speak out against instances where they’ve received anti-Asian harassment and discrimination.

Asian American Olympians and Olympic hopefuls speak out against instances where they’ve received anti-Asian harassment and discrimination.

Opinion: Charles Barkley’s empty platitudes about race and politics came at an awful time

This was not the time to pretend that both sides are guilty of racial politics.

Charles Barkley found occasion to talk about the world at large during CBS’ coverage of college basketball, and we’re worse off for it.

Barkley has long been a charismatic figure in the sports world, and one that is hard to read. Decades ago he infamously declared, “I am not a role model,” and yet here he is, continuing to share his thoughts on broad topics while showing that he’s also not anything nearing an expert — or even a person who has given any of this deep thought.

I’m going to share this video with the necessary preface from former NFL receiver Torrey Smith, because he correctly dismantles Barkley’s weird theory that the racial divide in America is stoked by politicians as a way of retaining power:

“Yeah, but the one thing I took out of that piece was, man, I think most white people and Black people are great people. I really believe that in my heart. But I think our system is set up for our politicians, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, are designed to make us not like each other so they can keep their grasp of money and power. They divide and conquer. I truly believe in my heart that most white people and Black people are awesome people. But we are so stupid following our politicians, whether they are Republicans or Democrats. And their only job is, Hey let’s make these people not like each other. We don’t live in their neighborhoods. We all got money. Let’s make the whites and Blacks not like each other. Let’s make rich people and poor people not like each other. Let’s scramble the middle class. I truly believe that in my heart.”

Barkley uttered these words during the same week when Republican lawmakers passed a bill so clearly meant to disenfranchise Black voters in Georgia that Major League Baseball was convinced to move its All-Star Game.

Seriously. Read the above sentence again. A league made of rich, generally conservative owners — who make some of their money through sponsorships from corporations that, again, generally favor Republican economic platforms — decided that actual legislation passed by one party in Georgia warranted the dramatic step of relocating a mid-summer festival that is a huge showcase for the league.

That’s a monumental step, and it’s happening because the Republican party is continuing to try to limit access to voting for one race (this Savannah Morning News piece offers an exhaustive look at the history of suppressing the Black vote in Georgia.)

Perhaps Barkley’s contention is that President Joe Biden, by calling the new law “an atrocity,” was … uh, just stirring things up to keep the masses riled so he can stay president? That doesn’t make any sense at all.

Biden was clearly fighting for the voters who helped make him president, which is exactly what a politician should do.

Barkley’s bar-stool level wisdom might pass as something you nod your head at after a few too many whiskeys, since you’re tired and hoping the guy who keeps talking might finally stay quiet if you appear to agree, but it has no place being elevated into the national discourse.

Whether or not most people, Black or white, are “great people” is immaterial, because we exist in a system that has favored the latter, larger group since before the country even became a country. America has been shaped by institutionalized racism; whether or not to reckon with that fact has become a political litmus test, but let’s not pretend like it’s all some ploy by the admittedly too-clubby political class to cause us to misdirect our anger. There are real ramifications here.

Republicans in Georgia responded to their state electing Biden and then two Democratic senators not by changing their philosophies and plans so as to persuade more Black voters but instead by seeking to silence those voters.

During his speech Barkley said, “we are so stupid following our politicians,” but that’s an atrocious thing to say to those who’ve followed Stacey Abrams in Georgia as she fights for their rights to have a say in decisions that impact their lives.

You can tell Barkley feels righteous trying to pretend there’s some middle ground to be found here. There’s not. Pretending an amorphous group of evil people is manipulating the masses does nothing to address real issues. It disconnects Americans from the work of their government further, exacerbating the problem Barkley is supposedly addressing.

It’d be best to not get analysis of these issues from that boisterous guy we like on the basketball studio show. This drab sort of interjection makes all politics feel far-off and nefarious, when most of it is nearby and monotonous (yet meaningful.)

Barkley has every right to share his opinions but there’s hardly any substance here, and a glance at which outlets and pundits were quickest to share this take lets you know that this bell rang loudest with a particular subset that seeks to use culture-war talking points as a way of disengaging voters from a closer look at policies and outcomes.

After all, dividing Americans is the way elections are won. It’s just a matter of which issues you choose to emphasize in your argument — unless you decide you can’t win on that front and resort instead to limiting who even has a vote in the first place.

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Kyle Larson’s early NASCAR win should not be mistaken as redemption for saying a racist slur

Kyle Larson’s on-track success shouldn’t shape a misguided redemption arc after being fired for saying the N-word.

You could see the narrative coming from miles away, literally. As Kyle Larson led the final 30 laps of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on his way to victory, you could see the potential for his on-track success to shape a misguided redemption arc in his return to the sport’s highest level.

With a dominant performance, the No. 5 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet driver claimed his first checkered flag of the 2021 season. It was also his first win since his previous team fired him in April after saying the N-word during a live-streamed iRacing event.

But, as the congratulations pour in, it’s imperative to remember that Larson’s early 2021 win cannot be mistaken as redemption for saying the racist slur. It cannot be part of some absolution narrative about his hypothetical growth, nor viewed as compensation for the pain he caused and perpetuated.

Professional success mitigating personal failures is a common and noticeable pattern throughout the sports world, and we should halt it as it begins to unfold here.

After Larson’s win, Chip Ganassi — who fired Larson after he used the racist slur last year — tweeted about the driver’s “nice comeback,” as if the 28 year old persevered after a brutal injury or is trying to bounce back after a down stretch of races.

“Everybody loves a good redemption story,” Brad Keselowski said after finishing second to Larson. “He’s fought really hard for his opportunity to come back and making the most of it. … I told him I wanted to win the damn race. But if I couldn’t, I’m glad he did. We’ve all been kind of pulling for him.”

This isn’t a comeback story like a questionable return after a scary wreck or a team suddenly folding and leaving everyone scrambling to save their careers and livelihoods. Larson was — and should continue to be — held accountable for his words, and any fighting he did was simply trying to recover from the consequences of his own behavior.

After the race, Keselowski was among those to congratulate Larson in person, as was Bubba Wallace, the only Black driver in the Cup Series who previously condemned Larson’s language but advocated for him getting a second chance in NASCAR.

Rooting for Larson is one thing. But establishing his win as part of some contrived redemption arc is a fallacy.

Larson is an exceptional driver, and it was an impressive win. But it’s not some arbitrary signal that he is off the hook for his heinous behavior last year because, really, there is nothing he could possibly accomplish on track to make up for the harm he’s done outside of it.

Before the season-opening Daytona 500 in February, Larson acknowledged that he still has work to do to atone for what he did. As I wrote at the time, that work needs to go beyond making amends and include him consciously, actively and vocally being anti-racist.

A check in the 2021 win column doesn’t change that.

Larson’s absence from all but four races during the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season was no one’s fault but his own, so treating his on-track success like he’s overcome a gigantic hurdle is an insult, particularly to the people he harmed and offended. It makes it seem like their pain and disappointment can be erased with enough strong lap times or wins.

He said something racist, hateful and demeaning that contributed to centuries’ worth of violence and injustice against Black people. Fast cars, fun races or checkered flags don’t compensate for that.

This isn’t to say don’t congratulate Larson or ignore how his early success this season could impact the rest of the year. But we can’t conflate a win on track with his humanity off it.

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Greg McDermott said what he meant and meant what he said when he spoke of the ‘plantation’

Simply awful.

Creighton basketball coach Greg McDermott has apologized for telling his players, after a loss late last month, that “I need everybody to stay on the plantation. I can’t have anybody leave the plantation.”

McDermott got out in front of the story by being the one to reveal what had happened when he sent out his mea culpa — typed on Notes, of course — Tuesday night. He says that he has “never used that analogy” and that it’s “not indicative” of who he is as a person.

That may very well be true, and McDermott is saying the right things about how he’ll try to move forward: There’s still work to be done and he’s going to listen to his Black players as they work through this.

Creighton assistant coach Terrence Rencher, who is Black and a member of the Coaches For Action coalition that seeks to use basketball to raise awareness of social injustice, also released a statement decrying McDermott’s language and saying he was focused on helping the players through this time.

We’ll have to wait and see what comes from this. Of course Creighton’s Black players want to push through now; they’ve spent hours upon hours this year, and throughout their lives, trying to get better so they can win games and are 13-5 in Big East play. Asking them to disrupt the season because their coach said something racist would be absurd.

After the season, though? McDermott is going to need to do more than just meet with a savvy public relations pro for more advice on how to spin this. Let’s give him the chance to do that work.

But let’s also acknowledge that he absolutely meant what he said — and that his charged language had very clear targets. McDermott wanted more from his Black players, and wanted them not to falter under the most difficult conditions. So he literally invoked slavery.

That’s horrifying, but also indicative of the attitude that still pervades among college coaches. Players have got to be all in, even though they don’t own the rights to their own name, image and likeness. They’ve got to be willing to go the extra mile, even though their scholarship isn’t guaranteed. They’ve got to listen to Coach when it feels like he’s trying to break them, but also never forget that student comes first in “student-athlete!”

As an athlete you’ve got to go all out — don’t for a moment think about running toward the transfer portal, that’s ungrateful — even though you know your coach is on the phone with his agent when a bigger job opens up.

If McDermott survives this and if the Blue Jays manage to go on any sort of run in March — and I hope they do — it will purely be because of the strength and grace of the players he aimed his unfathomable diatribe toward.

McDermott should give them space to lead here and turn his attention to coaching them: by working on technique and strategy, finding weaknesses in opponents and lifting players up when they sag under the pressure he helped to create.

Maybe that will be enough to make McDermott truly understand he should not run his program as if he’s an overseer pushing his players to fill baskets. He can find other ways to win.

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Kyle Larson’s atonement for using a racist slur shouldn’t end just because he’s back in NASCAR

Kyle Larson is getting his second chance in NASCAR after using a racist slur, but his work isn’t finished.

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Kyle Larson was almost certainly going to get his second chance in NASCAR after saying the N-word in April during a live-streamed iRacing event.

Going into the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season, Larson was considered to be the best upcoming free agent. And it appears that didn’t change all that much after he used the racist slur.

Yes, in the immediate aftermath, his sponsors bailed. Chip Ganassi Racing fired him. NASCAR suspended him. And while he didn’t return to the Cup Series last year, he frequently competed in other racing disciplines throughout 2020.

Now, Larson is getting his second chance at NASCAR’s highest level. But just because he has his job back doesn’t mean his efforts to atone for the harm he caused should end.

The 28-year-old driver signed a multi-year contract with Hendrick Motorsports to drive the No. 5 Chevrolet, the team announced in October, and Sunday’s season-opening Daytona 500 will be his first Cup Series race since March.

“I do have a lot to prove off the race track, showing people who I really am and showing people the good person that I know am,” Larson said Monday.

To be clear, there is zero excuse for Larson using the slur, just as there’s no justification for how a then-27-year-old could have possibly been unaware of how deeply offensive that word is.

It’s racist, derogatory, insensitive and totally unacceptable. And all of the consequences of his actions — which, let’s be honest, were basically the equivalent of a timeout — are no one’s fault but his own.

In August, Larson — an alumnus of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program who is half-Japanese and whose grandparents spent time in internment camps during World War II — told the Associated Press he was “ignorant” and “immature” for not appreciating the history behind the racist word and not understanding the pain it produces and perpetuates. In a personal essay he published in October to his website, he said he was “rightly” suspended and fired.

“The first lesson: The N-word is not mine to use,” Larson wrote in the essay. “It cannot be part of my vocabulary. The history of the word is connected to slavery, injustice and trauma that is deep and has gone on for far too long.

“I truly didn’t say the word with the intention of degrading or demeaning another person, but my ignorance ended up insulting an entire community of people who, in the year 2020, still have to fight for justice and equality.”

In the months since he was fired, he volunteered with foundations that provide educational opportunities for children of color and underserved communities.

To push for diversity in NASCAR, a mostly white, male sport, Larson continued working with the Urban Youth Racing School in Philadelphia, founder Anthony Martin said. The nonprofit targets children of color and offers a chance to learn about different facets of racing, along with STEM education and career opportunities.

Larson has been working with the Urban Youth Racing School for four years, said Martin, who is Black. He added that the driver donated two racing simulators to the school and is contributing to college scholarships for high school seniors.

Despite the work he’s done, there’s no real way to quantify its results, just like there’s no specific way to quantify the damage he did using the racist slur.

We’ll never know for certain how much self-reflection he did to figure out why he felt it was OK for him say the N-word in the first place, and the ease with which it left his mouth certainly suggested it was part of his vocabulary.

We’ll probably never know the extent of how he educated himself about the word’s hateful and degrading history, or if his remorse is authentic or if he did what he thought he needed to so he could return to NASCAR as fast as possible.

But if he wants us to believe his repentance is genuine instead of the latter, he needs to shift his focus away from what appears to be an attempt to prove he’s not racist himself, and instead be actively anti-racist. He needs to not only continue educating himself but also work diligently to make NASCAR a more inclusive and tolerant sport.

“I plan on continuing to do that this year,” Larson said. “Right now, I’m working on starting a foundation and trying to work out the specifics and details of that. There’s a lot of things I’m excited about that I’m going to continue to do.”

If he wants us to believe he’s sincere and believe he deserves the second chance he’s getting, he needs to keep his word and then some.

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Urban Meyer shows how toothless NFL’s anti-racism campaign is by hiring disgraced strength coach

Chris Doyle left Iowa amid accusations of bullying Black players.

It was easy to poke fun at the NFL’s initiative this year that allowed for the words “End Racism” to appear near the end zone, or on the back of a players’ helmet. Slogans tend to have little impact on deeply engrained systemic inequality that is both overtly and subtly upheld by those it benefits.

Now it’s clear that those were just words, as much meant to deflect the conversation as they were to change any minds.

With one hire by a coach who is new to the league, any goodwill those symbolic gestures might have created should be tossed with the force of a Patrick Mahomes pass into the deepest ocean.

Urban Meyer, new head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars, has hired Chris Doyle, a strength coach who lost his job at Iowa because a large group of former players, most of them Black, accused him of mistreating and bullying players — particularly the Black ones.

They accused him, in other words, of being outright and openly racist. And now he is employed in the NFL.

Doyle was also embroiled in other controversy at Iowa, when players were worked so hard they ended up being hospitalized.

Meyer, of course, will try to claim that Doyle has earned his next chance, but at this point he has no credibility. And his players know it:

It’s so easy to see through Meyer at this point; there are hundreds of quote tweets correcting this Jaguars propaganda. A small sampling:

That last one, of course, is a reference to Meyer hiring Zach Smith at Ohio State, even though Smith had been arrested on suspicion of domestic violence while the two worked together at Florida. Meyer then somehow failed to supervise Smith by not dealing with further allegations of domestic violence, leading to Smith’s firing and Meyer being suspended the first three games of the 2018 season.

Meyer handled that ordeal horrifically, including flat out lying about it at Big Ten Media Day. As he tried to salvage his reputation and career at Ohio State, he decided to Coach Mumble his way through a bunch of cliches meant to make him sound sincere, but kept making it worse. Even when what he needed to do was simply apologize to the woman his negligence imperiled, he failed.

This is just who Urban Meyer is. He knows he has to seem contrite and try to say the right thing so it might appear as though he does care, but he does not care. Because he also knows that he has won enough football games that the rest of this stuff doesn’t really matter.

The Jaguars proved as much by hiring him, despite so many red flags.

And now, as if we might have forgotten who Meyer really is, Meyer goes and hires the single most controversial strength coach he could find. This is particularly galling because Meyer sure seems like he was picked to be the next Jaguars coach before the team even pretended to abide by the Rooney Rule.

(Before you accuse me of partaking in cancel culture, let me be clear and say: Yes, I think Chris Doyle should be cancelled. Instead he walked away with a million dollars from Iowa and now works in the NFL.)

The only solace in all of this is that Doyle is no longer dealing with powerless college students who have no leverage. NFL players have real power. They have a union protecting their interests.  They’re grown men, most of them presumably earning more than Doyle.

Doyle — and Meyer, for that matter — will have to actually earn the respect of those players by showing they are proficient at their jobs, not because they operate in a system where they’ve been given total power.

And it seems quite possible that a man who has had to resort to bullying will quickly find himself at a loss in a situation like that.

The glaring problem with Urban Meyer reportedly expecting to land the Jaguars’ job

Booger McFarland’s take on Dwayne Haskins is as harmful as it is nonsensical

Just an absolutely putrid take.

Too often when we watch sports, we like to pretend we are watching some sort of real-life drama play out in an intimate, instructional way. It’s not just that we’re watching the most elite athletes fiercely competing with each other in contests that often ultimately come down to luck. There’s got to be more to it than that!

And of course there is. These athletes and coaches are just regular people, as flawed and unknowable as any of us. We should be interested in them and what they believe in and care about.

What we should avoid doing, always, is taking a situation we’re not actually close to and extrapolating it out into some sort of broad referendum on a group of worker-athletes who, despite their popularity, are so often burdened with negative stereotypes.

Yet here’s ESPN’s Booger McFarland, saying some of the dumbest stuff you’ll hear to a gigantic television audience:

“Often times young players, especially — I’m gonna go ahead — especially young African-American players, because they make up 70 percent of this league — they come into this league and ask themselves the wrong thing. They come into the league saying not ‘How can I be a better player?’ They don’t say ‘how can I be a better teammate?’ They don’t say ‘how can I be a better person; how can get my organization over the hump?’

“Here’s what they come in saying. They come in saying ‘How can I build my brand better? How can I build my social media following better? How can I work out on Instagram and show everybody that I’m ready to go, but when I get to the game, I don’t perform?”

“Dwayne Haskins unfortunately is not the first case that I’ve seen like this. And it won’t be the last. And it bothers me because a lot of it is the young African-American player. They come in and they don’t take this as a business. It is still a game to them. …

“I saw a quarterback do it. I saw JaMarcus Russell do it. The No. 1 pick in the draft, they gave him $40 million, and he threw it down the damn drain because he didn’t take it seriously.”

McFarland has already doubled down on this nonsense, in case you were wondering.

Where to even begin?

Dwayne Haskins, the 15th pick in the 2019 NFL draft who was recently cut by the Washington Football Team, isn’t even close to being the prime example of a top prospect supposedly partying his career away. That’d be Johnny Manziel, who is white.

There’s nothing suggesting he lost his career by trying to build his brand; he was tagged in some photos showing him partying in an a way that is inadvisable during a pandemic. Young, wealthy, famous athletes have partied for as long as they have existed — extending all the way back to the decades upon decades when the top pro leagues wouldn’t even allow Black athletes to participate. The Cowboys dynasty of the 1990s was renowned for partying.

There’s no evidence, whatsoever, that a large portion of the league’s Black majority fails in any substantial way to focus on football, as McFarland claims. Quite the contrary. Each year a few hundred Black players enter the league and become key contributors. Some grow into veterans. Others don’t, for a variety of reasons but the primary one being that the NFL is a physical grind unlike anything else and churns through bodies.

If athletes are supposed to treat the NFL as a business, like Booger says, what’s wrong with building their brand? That’s smart business! That’s focusing on creating something potentially lasting for the future. Most of them are going to get only a few seasons, and it’s not like the team they play for or the league itself is going to go to great lengths to help them out after their usefulness on the field has expired. They should build a brand, and building a brand shouldn’t be interpreted as not also caring about football (it’s quite possible to do both.)

The JaMarcus Russell comparison comes out of nowhere, seemingly related simply because Russell was also a Black person drafted high in the draft to play QB who ultimately did not work out. Social media was in its infancy when Russell was playing — he joined Twitter in 2010, his last year in the NFL — so that wasn’t a factor. We’ll never know the full extent of what went wrong with Russell, but he’s said the pressure of being the No. 1 pick got to him and was arrested for possession of codeine after being cut. Mental health and drug dependency probably had as much to do with him faltering as failing to “take it seriously” did.

I know absolutely nothing about Dwayne Haskins as a person and know even less about the inner workings of the Redskins and how culpable Haskins is for the end of his career in Washington. By his own admission he failed in certain ways, and we should absolutely continue to report on what happened and try to learn from it.

But pretending this is an indictment of Black players across the league is pandering gibberish. It’s the sort of thing football people love to say to each other, thinking they sound hardened and wise. Instead they sound like men who were indoctrinated into a bankrupt culture without even realizing it.

Let’s talk about the situations Haskins was put into in his young football career. He was recruited by Urban Meyer, who eventually left Ohio State amid a scandal caused when he failed to properly handle domestic abuse allegations against an assistant coach. After he left Florida years earlier, reports surfaced about Meyer coddling star players. This is not the sort of mentorship that “makes boys into men” or whatever the Football Establishment would have you believe.

Haskins was then drafted by Washington, the NFL’s most despicable franchise.

Yes, it’s fair to point out the ways in which Haskins bungled his chance, but not without this background as context. Many people and institutions failed him along the way.

It is completely unfair — and only bolsters damaging, racist stereotypes — to pretend Haskins is a symptom of a larger issue.

Naomi Osaka’s moving response to messages from parents of Trayvon Martin, Ahmaud Arbery

“I feel like I’m a vessel at this point,” Naomi Osaka said about her face masks at the U.S. Open.

At her U.S. Open quarterfinals match Tuesday, Naomi Osaka wore a black face mask with George Floyd’s name written on it.

At her fourth-round match Sunday, she wore a similar mask with Trayvon Martin’s name. In the third round, it was Ahmaud Arbery, in the second it was Elijah McClain, and in the first it was Breonna Taylor.

The 22-year-old two-time Grand Slam champ has been using her platform at the tournament to raise awareness about Black people who were killed by police and victims of racism and prejudice. She’s said she has seven masks with seven names, one for every round of the tournament, should she continue to advance.

“I’m aware that tennis is watched all over the world, and maybe there is someone that doesn’t know Breonna Taylor’s story,” Osaka said after her first-round victory, via The Washington Post. “Maybe they’ll Google it or something. For me, [it’s] just spreading awareness. I feel like the more people know the story, then the more interesting or interested they’ll become in it.”

And Tuesday during her post-match interview following her quarterfinals victory over Shelby Rogers, Osaka, the tournament’s No. 4 seed, watched videos messages from the parents of Martin and Arbery thanking her for her efforts.

Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Martin, said:

“I just want to say thank you to Naomi Osaka for representing Trayvon Martin on your customized mask, and also for Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Continue to do well, continue to kick butt at the U.S. Open. Thank you.”

Immediately after, a message Marcus Arbery Sr., Ahmaud Arbery’s father, came on:

“I just want to tell you thank you for the support on my family, and God bless you for what you’re doing and you’re supporting our family with my son. And my family really, really appreciates that, and God bless you.”

Martin was a 17-year-old Black teenager who was walking alone when a neighborhood watch volunteer — who was later acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges — shot and killed him in 2012 in Florida. Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was jogging in Georgia in February when he was also shot and killed, and three white men have been charged with his murder.

(Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports)

After watching the video messages from the victims’ parents, Osaka was clearly touched and briefly struggled to find the right words. She later said that she was just trying not to cry, but in that moment, she responded to video messages by saying:

“It means a lot. I feel like — I don’t know. They’re so strong. I’m not sure what I would be able to do if I was in their position. But, I don’t know. I feel like I’m a vessel at this point, and in order to spread awareness and hopefully — it’s not going to dull the pain — but hopefully I can, you know, help with anything that they need.”

More about Osaka’s moving reaction from New York Times tennis reporter Ben Rothenberg:

Osaka also responded on Twitter:

After beating Rogers in the quarterfinals Tuesday, Osaka will face No. 28 seed Jennifer Brady in the semifinals Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET.

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Watch: Giants’ impactful ‘Together, we will make a difference’ video

The New York Giants made a powerful statement through video against racism and social injustice.

The New York Giants joined the teams making a strong statement against racism and social injustice Friday. Big Blue posted a stirring video with players as well as ownership making the point:

Former Michigan State star Draymond Green signs as a contributor with CNN

Green has been making media appearances while off from basketball since mid-March.

Draymond Green is getting a jump start on his media career.

Green, whose Golden State Warriors haven’t played since the NBA shut down in mid-March and who weren’t a part of the restart, has been making media appearances during his off time, including as an analyst with the NBA on TNT studio show.

Now it appears he will be leaning a bit more into the news and political world, signing on with CNN as a contributor.

CNN and TNT are both owned by Turner Broadcasting Systems, so the marriage of Green appearing on networks under the same company umbrella jives. Green has been outspoken on subjects such as racism, police brutality, and social injustice and I’m sure will be right at home talking on CNN about where those issues intersect with sports.

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