Mother Jones - May 01, 2018

ILLUSTRATION BY JOE MORSE^ MAY  JUNE 2018 | MOTHER JONES^61

for all the clichs about sudden death and

there being no tomorrow, sports were always sup-

posed to be a substitute for reality, a place where

Americans could fight for three hours and hug it

out afterward. The newspapers used to call the

sports pages the “toy department” for a reason.

It was, after all, only a game.

But sports were always more than that for the

black athlete. Sports was the place, at least ideal-

istically, that fit the American Dream, where the

scoreboard guaranteed fairness. Even that was an

exaggeration, for when black athletes used their

wealth and fame to exercise their full citizenship—

as rich people do across the world—they were in-

evitably told to stick to sports.

A recent example came in February, when LeBron

James appeared in a video discussing President

Donald Trump on his multimedia site, Uninterrup-

ted. James, long the best basketball player in the

world and increasingly an unflinching critic of

Trump, said the president’s frequent, harmful com-

ments were “laughable” and “scary.” Shortly after the

HOLDING COURT

The return of the political athlete

BY HOWARD BRYANT

MIXED MEDIA