AUSTIN, Texas — Thursday, the NAACP sent a letter to most of the player associations for major sports calling for free agents to stay away from Texas teams. The plea comes as a result of the political actions of this past legislative session to restrict abortion access and voting access.
KVUE's Mike Marut spoke with the President for the Texas State Conference of NAACP Branches Gary Bledsoe about the letter.
Mike Marut: Were you a part of the discussion around this letter that was sent out to the different players associations?
Gary Bledsoe: Yes, I was.
Marut: Tell me about those discussions a little bit, the background and context from those.
Gary Bledsoe: Well, I think what we had reached out to our national organization to work with us because we know the African American community in Texas has been under siege. There has been an all out assault against African Americans that has been ongoing for quite some time. And this last legislative session was particularly problematic to us in that we saw so many laws that were anti-Black could be passed that will clearly jeopardize the opportunity of African-Americans to ever achieve equal citizenship rights in the state. So we knew there was a great alarm, and that kind of dovetails with the issues that we've been involved with of racism that have occurred in our state. And a number of those issues have involved individuals who happen to be pro-football or are pro-athletes or who happen to be former pro-athletes and what was occurring with them. So based on those issues and the dialog that the national NAACP continued to have with the players associations, we thought that was a natural thing for us to get involved in. And so we see this both as a matter of public service because people who are going to come here need to know what to expect when they come. You look at what's occurring in Southlake here in Texas, and you can understand you can be a really tremendous professional athlete. You can be making lots of money and be able to locate in a suburban community, but what you find is that students are able to call your children the N-word and to do so without being properly punished and how the government entity that the school district is a part of is taken over by individuals who want to promote the ability of students to be able to call your children whatever they want to call your children. And we can see where even the court system was utilized to prevent the school district from providing any kind of remedy to address the evils that those schoolchildren were enduring. So we look at that and you can see where even with the wealth that the athletes have accumulated, even with the fame they have accumulated of their children and their families are being profiled and discriminated against on a regular basis. And so we think that any young athlete that might be looking to sign with the team should know the full facts and the consideration that they have to look at in terms of whether or not to sign with a particular team or a team in Texas. And so we think it's important for us to alert them what they're going to encounter and what they're going to encounter may frequently not be what they would like to encounter. And there are many venues that have professional sports teams and all of the sports where African-Americans are respected and where their children can be educated and be and avoid being called racial slurs and having people in the community stand up and oppose granting dignity to people simply because of the color of their skin. And you know what we did at the NAACP with President Derrick Johnson is to do something that it's already kind of been done where we're just following suit. You know, years ago, when their professional NBA franchises, for example, they had owners that had made horrible comments, you know, players refused to go and play there or sign there. This is not much different. We see the leadership that LeBron James and the Williams sisters and people like that have tried to have on social justice issues. And what we're saying here is we don't want you to blindly sign. And if a Texas team is going to offer you a $50 million contract, you're probably going to get a $50 million contract elsewhere. And it might be that whatever that elsewhere is might be a better place for you and your family, and the other part of what you were wanting to do. As sports teams are very powerful in our state, this is a real sports-conscious state. And because it's a sports-conscious state, we know that people listen to people that are owners of professional teams. They have largess in power. You can see it where they get special laws passed at the Legislature. They have special deals with the state and with local government entities, so we know they can help. But when we were seeking to stave off the assault on being African-American in this in this state, they were not there. And you know, those players have to understand, you know, it's now illegal to teach proper Black history to schools to to students in Texas. So that means you don't really matter. You know, if you're going to teach about slavery, you got to teach about how "good" it was for the slaves to be enslaved. You got to teach how it was "good" for them to come over and to be Christianized or be taken from Africa or whatever. You got to teach nonsense like that under the new laws. So we think this is outrageous, that these things are now being required and people need to understand what you're getting into if you come here and if you come here and you're going to have a family, you need to understand that there are a lot of former players and current players are having problems right now and their families, and you need to take note of that.
Marut: You mentioned at the beginning of your answer, how this legislature was particularly anti-Black with just so many of the laws that were passed can you kind of expand on that a little bit and what that means. Precisely just for people who either weren't paying attention or can't imagine the experience or can't put themselves in the shoes of the Black community.
Gary Bledsoe: Well, that's a great question. There were so many things that happened. I'll just mentioned several of them because I think it was one of the legislatures that I will not forget in a long, long time because I don't know that it could get too much worse from this. When we thought that maybe a session or so ago, but this was unbelievable. This is the session that would have made the 1923 Legislature that had made it illegal for Blacks to vote in the Democratic primary, it would have made that Legislature proud to have passed a law that came out of this legislature. One of the laws was prohibiting the utilization of critical race theory in public education. And so with that, what that means is you can't properly teach African American history. You can't teach it from the African American point of view. You have to include things whenever you talk about Black history that would be nonsensical, such as talk about the "benevolence" of slavery and how slaves "benefited" from slavery or whatever. The critical race theory issue that prohibits the teaching of African American history in any appropriate form is one incredible example of one of the anti-Black things that that occurred. The people who were opposed to the critical race theory don't really understand what it is. Secondly, the all out assault in reference to elections it clearly was designed to marginalize African American and Latino voters. It was clearly designed to be able to empower people like poll watchers that have always gone into Black communities and acted like overseers in the voting process to where they have now been elevated above election judges. And so the election judges who attempted to try to bring them into some semblance of being humane or decent to the people in the polling places now are prevented from taking any action and addressing the wrongdoing by these individual poll watchers. So that's a problem, and it goes all the way from the the registration process to how you vote the early voting process. Through the actual voting process, it creates so many needless and nonsensical crimes. It is intended or was designed and intended to discourage as many Black folk from voting as possible. And I think that has to be something that everyone considers when we have a state that has already taken a Crystal Mason who didn't deserve to be charged with the crime and ruin her life because people needed to have someone as a poster person to prove there being some kind of voter fraud. You take someone who thinks they are doing the right thing, who's out of prison on parole and thinking they have a legal right to vote, and they mistakenly cast a vote that's never even counted and they get prosecuted and sent to prison. That's outrageous. And then we look at the whole issue with redistricting, and the idea is to try to make sure that Black and Brown people never share power in this state and how you take a state that is 59% minority and 41% Anglo. Yet you give you give 60% or greater of the seats in the different political bodies to white citizens so that they can dominate every level of the Legislature of the Texas congressional delegation. So when we look at that and see how this incredible racial gerrymander that took place gives largesse to to white voters and how it marginalizes Black and Brown folk to where there's always going to be a knowledge or an understanding that when people sit down and decide upon power, that the Black and Brown voices are not going to be there because they're going to always be in the minority. Despite the fact that there are basically 60% of the population, I can consider this last redistricting process to be about making 40 greater than 60. And so the whole idea is how can we take 40% of the population and provide for that portion of the population to be able to control the state in perpetuity in the state legislature achieve. With the redistricting legislation that it passed, those are just some examples of the horrible things that occurred this session, many, many more. And even good innocuous bills that we thought no one would oppose in reference to criminal justice reforms were opposed. So we understand that we're under siege and that there was a clear anti-Black session this time and that people should know that because when you're a pro player, when you get in your car and you drive to the stadium or when you drive home from the stadium, you're African American just like I am, you're subject to the same kind of stops and abuses and kinds of harassment that other African Americans do. We might even recall what happened to Ricky Williams over at UT when he happened to say that his name was Ricky Williams when his given name was Eric Williams. And so when he showed his driver's license, they end up charging him with the crime for giving a false name when he gave the name that everybody called him by. So we understand what Blacks go through. And this is just one example.
Marut: Going forward, what do you hope to see as a result of this letter that sent to all the players associations?
Gary Bledsoe: A couple of things. We're hoping to allow our young people to have this information so they don't make the mistake of coming here and ended up regretting it and ruining their lives where they're going to go and move into a community where they're not wanted and not respected. Number two, we're hoping that this might be an alarm to people in the business community to come and to try to rectify things because they have a lot of power within this state and they can deal with bellicose public officials and help move them in the right direction. You know, and if things happen the correct way and if people don't come here and the sports franchises begin to feel the crunch and don't have the level of success on the field and this affects their fan base, I think that hopefully will get the attention of individuals with the hope it would start even before then. But if that gets the attention of the people that are in power that own the sports franchises, then maybe they'll join with us and try to make Texas a place as hospitable to all people. Because, you know, we're supportive of all people having good and righteous opportunities and great living and to be free from from issues that are problematic for society. We're very supportive of all. And I think if you have people come to the table and to say that we will not tolerate and we're going to stand over here with our Black brothers right now and they'll stand with us tomorrow when issues come up relating to us where they we might need them once we stand together and say we want Texas to be something different. I think that will have just the opposite effect of what maybe this this initiative that we're undertaking would have. I think people would look at Texas as a place where I want to sign with the Texas team. I want to go there. I know my children are going to be educated well. I know my children are going to be treated well by law enforcement. I know that my my children are going to be protected and people can't call them the N-word or abuse them in a public school context. I know that I belong. I know that people want me. I know that they want me to share power because they see me as the Texan that as a black person, but as a Texan. And I think once we can reach that pinnacle, then I think we can really make a difference in the franchise that we end up flourishing. I think we'd end up having the best franchises because I think one thing we've seen with free agency people like to go where they feel like they're the franchises have an opportunity of winning and they feel like they're going to be treated well in the community. And so I think you add those intangibles together and you bring people in the community, your grassroots organizations like the NAACP together to work with you. And I think it can be a win win for Texas in all ways, and even sports fans are going to gain by that, you know, like other sports fans in Texas. Root for our Texas teams. But the bottom line is we're under siege right now and people have to understand what this means to our community. You have really been placed in a subordinate status and we need to stop it in whatever way that we can. And so we're going to undertake this initiative to do all that we can to bring the resources to bear that we have because not everything is at our disposal right now or we think this is one thing that's at our disposal. The fact that we have a dialog, the young people know that we care about them, we love them, respect them and we want them to have good careers. Yes, I'd love to have our franchises in Texas doing the best. But right now we have to bite this bullet right now and and do this because the only way we're going to get decent and equitable rights in Texas is to get people in power to be on our side and not all be on the other side drawn with people who are anti-Black that are pushing whatever anti-black initiative that they want and being able to succeed. And that's just mind boggling. Again, as we look at South Lake and look at that and you look at something that hit people out of nowhere, people were where they're avoiding the issues. It's a suburban community. It wasn't supposed to happen there. And you look at what's occurred there, it's like ground zero for hostility against African Americans. That's an example of what's occurring in Texas. And that's the best example we can give athletes as to what might happen to you if you signed with the Texas team.
Marut: This was sent to the professional players associations, but is this messaging really also directed at college and high school athletes, too?
Gary Bledsoe: Well, we haven't directed the message to them. We made a conscious decision to go after the players association. But I think it's clearly an appropriate analogy because we know what happened here at the University of Texas with Caden Sterns where he simply was a young man expressing his beliefs on social justice issues. And so he was just lambasted with hate from people out of the Longhorn community. And it's so bad that the young man, even though he had been a blue chip athlete, had come in - I think he was a five star player in high school and he had a year of eligibility left - I mean, in my opinion, was one of the best Longhorn players. He left early and said he's never going to return to Texas because of the hostility that he received, simply because he expressed his First Amendment rights and letting people know what he felt about whether it's a song or other social justice issues. And then, you know, I think that ended up leading to all kinds of changes at the university where there's the departure of a football coach or president, whatever it might be, that a lot of issues have happened because of conservatism that are taking over. And I think that's a real issue and problems. I think young people who might be from out of state or even young people in state when they might have a choice. You know, if you're going to be able to go to a state where people are going to respect you and you're not going to have to be like Ricky Williams here in Texas and get stopped and busted because you tell them your your name is Ricky Williams and that's what we know you to be. You know, you don't want to be in a community like that. You want to be in the community where you respect respected and people care about you. And so I think this could have an impact there. I think that's not our intent right now. We haven't broadened into that point. But I think that it's very logical to me if I'm a blue chip athlete and especially if I don't have to be in Texas, that that's really a legitimate option. I mean, it may not be just that Alabama is a better institution, but it might be that Alabama is horrible, as Alabama is. I don't know that they're doing the kind of things that Texas is doing overall.
Marut: Is there anything else that you want to add about this letter, about the intent of this letter?
Gary Bledsoe: Well, the intent of this letter, obviously, we're hoping to reach out to people of goodwill of of all colors, all political persuasions that have loyalty to organizations, but who understand the basic right to decency that we should have as human beings. And we're just saying that we should have the same basic right to decency as other folks, and we're not asking you to devote a certain way. We're not asking you to be some kind of progressive thinker, but I think there's some basic things about humanity and decency that should cut across political lines. And so we're hoping that we get a groundswell of support from all people of goodwill to come in and to join with us. And we've been besieged today with hate mail and hate calls simply because of this initiative. And that shows where we are. The fact that these things are occurring as a result of just us trying to do the right thing and to help people. But we need other good people to come in and stand up because when I have people who don't look like me, they're standing up with me and say, there's nothing wrong with people not wanting to be mistreated. There's nothing wrong with people and not wanting to have their children called Aleisha a racial slur. There's nothing wrong with children, with children born in the school district that they intend to bring to justice or to discipline individuals who wreak havoc against them or discriminate or arrest them in some form or fashion in violation of school policy or law. There's nothing wrong with saying that you want protection, that you want protection of a law, but when you don't get it, we understand that there is a real problem. Martin Luther King Jr. said an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. And so if there is injustice going on in Southlake, you have to understand there's a threat of injustice occurring everywhere. So whether it's going to be in Southlake or whether it's going to be in Austin or Beaumont or Vidor, Texas, it doesn't really matter. We have to come together as people of goodwill to say, Well, I don't know about the politics, about whether government should be supportive of different kinds of programs, but there are some things that the government should do ensure basic decency and humanity for all citizens that all citizens deserve to be respected by law enforcement. All citizens need to have the dignity of not being subjected to racial slurs. All citizens need to have the opportunity to have their history taught properly in the public schools. Those are just basic concepts of basic decency that don't connote any kind of political philosophy. And so we're hoping to get people to come with us and join with us and be part of a movement to to take a negative and make it into a positive. So we can make this a great state that that is welcoming to everybody. I don't see why it can't be, and that shouldn't cut that. That shouldn't be something that somebody, even a conservative can embrace because those are those are conservative principles, the basic decency and humanity and civility that we expect to have in our lives. We want to be the beacon others to look at from other places in the world and said to be in the example of what's wrong in the world, which is where we are right now.
Marut: OK, well, thank you so much, Gary, I really appreciate you doing this.
You can read the letter sent to players' associations in its entirety below.
Watch the full interview here:
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