It was the silence that spoke loudest.
No basketballs pounding on hardwood. All games canceled. No baseballs cracking off bats
Three games canceled. No soccer balls ricocheting down the field. Five games canceled.
No booming aces. The Western & Southern Open tennis tournament halted for a day.
This is what the silence said: No more Jacob Blakes. No more George Floyds. No more
Breonna Taylors. No more Natasha McKennas. No more Philando Castiles. No more
Michael Browns. No more Tamir Rices. No more Eric Garners. No more Alton Sterlings.
No more pain.
Never before has the world of sports spoken so emphatically. The timing was unmistakably
significant. The athlete walkouts were set starkly against a frightened Trumpian vision
presented at the Republican National Convention.
We watched this week as two Americas clashed in front of us, separated by generations
and by oceans-apart views of race, justice and what it means to be a patriot.
(...)
"We are scared as Black people in America," LeBron James said, downcast as he spoke at
a news conference inside the N.B.A.'s so-called bubble at Walt Disney World near Orlando,
Florida.
"Because you don't know, you have no idea, how that cop that day left the house." he added.
"You don't know if he woke up on a good side of the bed, if he woke up on the wrong side