Over the past year or so, we have watched professional athletes, led by Colin Kaepernick, kneel during the national anthem. While this act has spurred national debate on the themes of “Black Lives Matter”, especially police treatment of black victims, it has done little to affect immediate changes in our society. The million women march on Washington raised the public awareness of social and sexual injustices, yet does little to bring about immediate changes in our society. The anti-Vietnam war marches in the late 1960’s and early 70’s spurred the debate on the war, but did little to bring the war to a rapid conclusion.
Social protests need to have a more immediate result than just raising public awareness. My good friend Jim gave me a great idea at a recent social gathering. Jim’s cause is the growing number of voter suppression laws that have recently been enacted in so many state legislatures especially through the South. The right to vote is under attack in America. Over the last decade, nine Southern states have implemented voter restriction laws. Most require voters to show state-issued photo ID at the polls. These laws have be enacted to make it harder for people of color and low-income to vote as they often lack the required voter photo ID.. These voter suppression laws have resulted in final voter counts much more conservative than the population make-up would predict.
Jim gave me a simple solution to this social injustice – convince young super athletes to refuse to matriculate in colleges and universities within those states that have voter suppression laws. Of course, this would require a well-known and respected national organization such as the NAACP to endorse this policy and to seek out blossoming high school super-stars on a grand scale and convince them that they are leading a movement. By choosing to take their talents to a university in a state that does have these voter restriction laws, they are in fact a force leading to improvements to the social equality in our country. The sacrifice for the young athlete are minimal, but the results can be outstanding.
The immediate drop in top talent in these large universities should result in a quick drop off in the performance of these spots teams. Jim is convinced that the people of these states are more concerned with the performance of their sport teams than they are about the racial make-up of the state’s electorate or elected bodies. He believes and I agree that these laws would quickly be reversed and people previously denied access to the polls will quickly earn their right to vote.
Such a simple solution to a social wrong. It would be nice if other social injustices could be attacked with such simple solutions.
H O W A R D S B E N D 