In the nearly four weeks since George Floyd was killed by a Minneapolis police officer, people throughout the U.S. and the world have marched in protest, re-energized in the fight against systemic racism and police violence. In the sporting world, many Black athletes have been at the forefront the movement, standing with protesters, giving speeches at rallies, and using their platforms to implore others to be actively anti-racist and to promote and protect Black lives. And after protesters began tearing down statues of slave owners and cities realized it was high time to do away with their statues of Confederate soldiers and other racist historical figures like Christopher Columbus, sports teams have finally begun removing their own problematic monuments, marking a staggering shift in a world that has historically protected the white and powerful.

In sports, having your own statue stand outside a stadium is the pinnacle of achievement for athletes, coaches, and owners alike. In a world that moves so quickly yet reveres heroes of the past, a statue is the closest a sports figure gets to reaching immortality. But even those who get a statue don’t always deserve one, and now several teams are attempting to right their past wrongs.

Last week, the Carolina Panthers reportedly permanently removed a statue of founder and former owner Jerry Richardson, who had was forced to sell the team after it was reported that he used racial slurs and engaged in sexual harassment. They weren’t the only NFL team that made this decision, as Washington took the same step with racist former owner George Preston Marshall. Also on Friday, the Minnesota Twins took this action with former owner Calvin Griffith’s statue. These latest removals occurred on Juneteenth, the holiday which remembers the official ending of slavery.

Under Marshall, Washington was the last NFL team to integrate in 1962 following pressure from the U.S. government. He also had the marching band play the Confederate song, “Dixie,” for 23 years, according to ESPN. In a statement, the team said that the removal of his statue was an “overdue step on the road to lasting equality and justice.” Marshall was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963 and is still part of the team’s Ring of Fame. Additionally, there is a section of FedEx Field still named after him and he is included on the team’s history wall outside of the locker room in its practice facility.

Griffith, who inherited the franchise in 1966 ⁠— then called the Washington Senators ⁠— and sold the team in 1984, passed away at age 87 in 1999. In a 1978 speech, Griffith insulted his Black player Rod Carew and said that he only moved the Twins to Minnesota “when I found out you only had 15,000 Blacks here.”

“I’ll tell you why we came to Minnesota. It was when I found out you only had 15,000 Blacks here,” Griffith said. “Black people don’t go to ballgames, but they’ll fill up a rassling ring and put up such a chant it’ll scare you to death. It’s unbelievable. We came here because you’ve got good, hardworking, white people here.”

In a statement, the Twins organization said it acknowledged Griffith’s “prominent role” in the team’s history, but that it could not ignore his racist comments.

“We cannot remove Calvin Griffith from the history of the Minnesota Twins, but we believe removal of this statue is an important and necessary step in our ongoing commitment to provide a Target Field experience where every fan and employee feels safe and welcome,” read part of the statement.

As the first thing that many fans see when they enter a stadium, statues are iconic (and wildly expensive) representations of many franchises. At their core, they are meant to represent the very best in sport. As their teams seem to have finally realized, Griffith, Marshall and Richardson do not deserve to be immortalized.

Many, like Fox News host Laura Ingraham, think athletes have no place talking about politics. But sport ⁠— no matter how much of a reprieve from the depressing daily news cycle it may be for some ⁠— has always been intertwined with politics. Athletes are human beings first and can speak on whatever issues they believe in. If presidents can invite championship teams to the White House for a photo op, then those players can also use the opportunity to take a stand and even opt not to go. In recent years, prominent athletes and coaches have even been successful in using their platforms to bring about progress or even change public opinion.

Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and WNBA player Natasha Cloud continue to bring the conversation about gun control to the national fore. Colin Kaepernick got people to pay attention to police brutality against Black Americans. Maya Moore took entire seasons off from playing during her prime to fight for a man’s innocence in a broken criminal justice system. NBA stars like Stephen Curry and Jaylen Brown have marched with and for the people. Bubba Wallace got NASCAR to ban Confederate flags at races, something that would have been unfathomable even just one month ago. LeBron James has started a voting rights group to protect Black Americans’ civil rights. Politics affect all people in the U.S. — the poor and the privileged, celebrity and essential worker. And now more than ever before, athletes in all sports are speaking up.

And why shouldn’t we pay attention? After all, sport is essentially a microcosm for society as a whole. Just like in the boardrooms of corporate America and in government offices, the small number of people in power in sports do not reflect the many people that work under them. There are no Black commissioners in any of the U.S.’s major sports leagues despite the high numbers of Black athletes. The NFL may have its Rooney Rule, but recent reports have rightfully pointed out its failings. Even in the progressive NBA and WNBA, which are made up of 81.9 percent and 82.7 percent players of color, respectively, there are significantly fewer Black head coaches, general managers and team owners.

So while the removal of statues of prominent racist sporting figures is very important and a step in the right direction, it is important that the franchises’ activism doesn’t just stop there.

NBA stars around the country have been taking initiative in recent weeks and adding their voice, their influence, and their money to the Black Lives Matter movement and the demand for equal justice and police reform. The protests have gained so much traction that it’s raised serious concerns about whether resuming the NBA season in Orlando could distract from the movement.

DeMar DeRozan, along with Russell Westbrook, Kendrick Lamar, and many others, have helped lead protests in Compton recently, just a few of many examples of athletes, musicians, and celebrities joining the cause in high-profile ways. DeRozan took time out on Friday to speak with Taylor Rooks of Bleacher Report about his experience as a Black man in America and much more.

During one segment, DeRozan talks about an experience he had in ninth grade of going to play a basketball game at a predominately white school and the culture shock he felt at just how different everything was from where he lived and where he was raised.

“I saw for the first time how different their schools were, facilities, just everything about that culture, was like night and day from us,” DeRozan said. “From then on, it used to make me question, like, damn, why is their stuff better, why do they have this better, why they talk better, why they dress better? So many questions came about, and as I continued to get older, I seen the separation from privilege to where we came from.”

It’s a wide-ranging interview that’s well worth the listen, covering several topics relevant to the current social conversation, including how he learned to fear the police, the “intense” Zoom calls about the restart in Orlando, and how Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has been a fearless leader for social justice and set the tenor for his players and other coaches around the league.

Doyin Richards’s name has more of a story than most.

The writer, speaker, and social media influencer shared a bit of his family’s history that ties directly into the Juneteenth holiday and gives us a glimpse of how that history still directly impacts present generations.

He wrote on Facebook:

Doyin Richards/Facebook

“Here’s my personal Juneteenth story/history lesson.

When slavery was abolished, newly-freed slaves had the choice of making a life for themselves in America or going back home to Africa. Many of my ancestors chose the latter option and moved to a place aptly named ‘Freetown’ which to this day is the largest city in Sierra Leone (a West African country).

As you probably would assume, slaves had their names taken from them and changed to something ‘more American’, like Stephen, Michael, or Daniel – because if slave owners forcibly took them from their homelands, they sure as hell weren’t going to have the courtesy of learning how to pronounce their birth names.

Because of that, many newly-freed slaves in Freetown changed their names back to common surnames from the Yoruba language – like ‘Adewole’ for example. But here’s the interesting thing – my ancestors chose to keep their slave owners’ last name of Richards. But why? Nobody knows for sure, but many in my family’s lineage believes it’s because we had benevolent slave owners (that’s the leader in the ‘oxymoron hall of fame’) and decided to keep it.

Fast-forward to the time when me and my two brothers showed up on earth, my dad (who was born and raised in Freetown) insisted that we have Yoruba first names to offset the slave owners’ legacy that would always follow us. And with that, my full Yoruba name of Adedoyin means ‘royalty’ or ‘son of the king.’ As you know by now, I just go by Doyin.

But because I wanted to fit in so badly in my predominately white Massachusetts hometown as a kid, I let people call me ‘Dwayne’ instead of the proper pronunciation of ‘doe-ween’ because it was easier *for them*. Then I watched the classic movie ‘Roots’ and saw Kunta Kinte getting the shit kicked out of him by his white owners when he refused to change his name to ‘Toby’ and it changed everything for me. Then I knew changing my name and the pronunciation of it would be a disgrace to my ancestors who were raped, beaten and killed to keep their names just because I wanted to make some white people feel comfortable.

But to even to this day, I carry the burden of white supremacy in my own last name. Somewhere in the Deep South, there could be a racist Richards who hates everything about me, but we’re considered ‘family’ because of our history. That’s a tough pill to swallow.

I often wonder what my dad (who passed away last year) would think of what’s happening right now. He would probably say something to the effect of, ‘You are a leader, and leaders will be remembered by how they show up.’ So I’m here, Adedoyin Richards, showing up to fight for equality – because that’s what he and my ancestors would’ve wanted and expected. Happy Juneteenth, and I hope you continue to fight for equality in your own way today and every day. #juneteenth“

It’s easy to think the history of slavery and emancipation in abstract, long-ago terms when it’s not your personal family’s history. Seeing how Richards’ lineage has played out on two continents and how much meaning his first and last name hold is a good reminder that Juneteenth isn’t just a part of our nation’s story, but a deeply personal story for many Black Americans as well.

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Many companies and organizations celebrated Juneteenth on Friday, some for the first time as corporate America and the nation as a whole reexamines its relationship with racism. The holiday and its importance has become a hot topic amid mass protests against racial injustice and police brutality against Black people in recent weeks, but one company seems to have gone too far and had to apologize on social media.

Messaging company Snapchat issued an apology on Friday after a filter meant to celebrate Juneteenth went viral for its apparent insensitivity about the meaning of Juneteenth to the Black community. The “lens” was a camera function that put the words “Juneteenth Freedom Day” on screens and asked users to “smile.” When they did, metal chains appearing in the background of the image would be broken.

Juneteenth is a celebration of the day slaves in Texas finally learned they were granted their freedom a full two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and after the conclusion of the Civil War. The allusion to slavery, and its apparent ending as the result of a smile, was enough to draw outrage on other social media platforms.

Snapchat quickly removed the lens and issued an apology on Twitter, saying the filter was added without proper review.

“The Lens that went live hadn’t been approved through our review process,” the message said. “We are investigating so this doesn’t happen again.”

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Earlier this year, Kamaiyah released her long-awaited third record Got It Made after ending a deal with Interscope. But that wasn’t the last we’ve heard of her. Since debuting the album, Kamaiyah has been steadily sharing a handful of stand-alone singles, including “Extravagant” and “Go Crazy,” which earned a quarantine-style video. Now, the Bay Area rapper returns with the easygoing number “Black Excellence.”

Aptly arriving on Juneteenth, “Black Excellence” features Kamaiyah flaunting her achievements with a polished flow over a cruising beat. “I’m Black excellence / B*tch check my melanin,” she repeats at the chorus.

Ahead of the single’s release, Kamaiyah had some beef with Kehlani. Kamaiyah accused the singer of colorism after her verse was removed from Kehlani’s “All Me.” Addressing the situation on social media, Kamaiyah said: “I feel like it never should have came out. I never wanted ‘All Me’ to come out and she wanted ‘All Me’ to come out… It was our song, we did a project together… if anything I was genuine. My problem came from the disrespect. It was out of hand. It was on some, ‘Oh you’re Black, you’re ghetto, you’re not tasteful.’”

Listen to “Black Excellence” above.

Got It Made is out now via GRNDWRK/Empire. Get it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

As part of the NBA Juneteenth celebration, a discussion between Caron Butler and Lakers guard Danny Green led to Green explaining why he joined “More Than A Vote,” the new get-out-the vote and education initiative led by LeBron James.

“We all come from different places and different communities,” Green told Butler, referencing the very public learning curve Drew Brees went through this month. “If we can help educate them, it helps in our next generation of not having police brutality, so it’s big for everyone with a platform … to educate the cities that they come from.”

Yet police brutality is not the only issue at stake, and James’ organization seeks to attack voting and public policy with much broader strategy. James said when the campaign launched that “we’re going to give you the background of how to vote and what they’re trying to do, the other side, to stop you from voting.”

Voter suppression became a hot-button issue anew after Georgia’s primary election. Many waited in line into the night to make their vote count, and James spoke out against the state’s failures that night, calling American voting systems “structurally racist.” Shortly after, James launched “More Than A Vote.”

Green, though, said learning about his civil duties and power as a voter came late.

“I didn’t really care for politics or care to get involved,” Green said. “I would vote when I was able to, but understanding that our voice and taking action does make a difference and is important, and the younger generation understanding that a lot quicker than we did is important for the future.”

Much discussion in the NBA the past couple weeks has covered the question of whether that education process would be help or hurt by the league returning to play. Green said he sees both sides but ultimately believes having a microphone every day on television is too massive a platform to ignore, so long as the message stays front and center.

“It’s an advantage to us to get down there and use that platform to keep the movement alive,” Green said. “It’s a better way for everybody to be there and everybody to be united, and use that platform to our advantage to really put our foot on the gas.”

For those unable to donate or who are not on TV like NBA athletes, Green urged other forms of action, including campaigning with politicians, continuing to protest, and educating oneself.

“There’s many ways to speak out,” Green said. “You don’t have to always use your voice if you’re not comfortable. … It would be nice to get comfortable to speak out some, but there’s so many other ways to join the movement and be with us.”

WARNING/EDITOR’S NOTE: This article contains subject matter and some language (thought censored) that may be triggering for readers. However, in our attempt to highlight passive examples of systemic racism we felt it was a story worth sharing.

There are certain sounds that are synonymous with summer, the crack of a baseball bat, the sounds of someone cannon-balling into a pool, and the tinny sound of the ice cream truck rolling down the street, accompanied by the scampering sound of children’s feet.

The song played by the ice cream truck in most people’s neighborhoods sounds something like this:

The Ice Cream Truck Song

www.youtube.com

The tune is “timeless,” but most people don’t know that the words to the most popular version of the song are incredibly racist.

The original version of the melody comes from the traditional British song “The (Old) Rose Tree” which made its way to the American colonies by Scottish and Irish immigrants in the 1700s where it was popularized as the song, “Turkey in the Straw.”

In the late 1820s, the melody took a turn for the disturbingly racist when multiple songs were written about “Zip Coon,” a popular minstrel character. Although it’s unclear who originally wrote the lyrics, there were versions published by Thomas Birch in 1834 and George Washington Dixon in 1835.

O ole Zip Coon he is a larned skoler,

Sings posum up a gum tree an conny in a holler.

Posum up a gum tree, coonny on a stump,

Den over dubble trubble, Zip coon will jump

The chorus of “O Zip a duden duden duden zip a duden day” would later become the inspiration for Disney’s “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.”

Zip Coon was a stock minstrel show character who was a way to mock free Black men. He was an arrogant, ostentatious man who wore flashy clothes and attempted to speak like affluent white members of society, usually to his own disparagement.

He was often paired with Jim Crow, a dimwitted rural character. The actors who played both roles were white and wore blackface.

via Wikimedia Commons

OLD ZIP COON – 1834 – Performed by Tom Roush

www.youtube.com

In the early 1900s, coon cards which were essentially playing cards with racist depictions of Black people eating watermelons while making wide-eyed looks, were popular and inspired another racist version of the popular melody: “Ni**er Love a Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!”

The song opens with someone telling a group of Black people to stop playing dominoes and to come get some ice cream. The racist twist is that it’s “the colored man’s ice cream: Watermelon!”

The hook has to be one of the most racist things every written:

Ni**er love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!

Ni**er love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!

For here, they’re made with a half a pound of co’l

There’s nothing like a watermelon for a hungry coon

The Truth About The Ice Cream Truck Jingle | Ni**er Love A Watermelon

youtu.be

The song would become popular in ice cream parlors of the early 1900s that often played minstrel songs. After World War II, when many people moved out the cities and into the suburbs, ice cream parlors sent trucks out to these new neighborhoods to expand their business to the ‘burbs.

To keep the old-timey feel of the parlor and to alert the children to the truck’s presence, they would commonly play the melody associated with the two extremely racist songs.

Hundreds of years after the melody first was written somewhere in England, American children now associate the song with one of the purest joys life has to offer, the cool taste of ice cream on a hot summer’s day.

But after learning the melody’s historic association with pain and oppression, can we ever hear the song the same way? Should we be happy that a timeless melody has been redeemed after decades of being associated with something positive? Or should it be banished it from being broadcast on our streets and replaced by something that better describes the joys of summer?

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