Tread Carefully

The recent police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha seems to have sparked several professional athletes in many leagues to boycott their games as a way of expressing their protest and their desire to see change happen.

This space has mocked the National Basketball Association's "social justice slogans" on the backs of player jerseys, since the league continues to ignore human rights abuses in its number one new cash market, China, while singling out awful but far less frequent wrongs committed here. The boycotts deserve about the same kind of sneer.

But it's worth pointing one caveat out, however, that for their own sake I hope pro athletes remember when they're considering a work stoppage as a form of protest. The only reason we pay attention to them is because they play. The only reason they have fame is because they play. The only reason journalists ask them what they think is because they play. The only reason they become multimillionaires for their performance in kids games instead of worrying about a mortgage is because they play. The only reason they are in a position to push the culture in the direction they'd like it to go is because they play.

If they stop playing, we stop caring -- President Trump's Twitter feed notwithstanding. Without the platform of professional sports on which to stand, a big chunk of the professional athlete world is made up of guys who went to college for a year or earned an airy-sounding degree that qualifies them for nothing any more special than anyone else. 

So you see, guys, it's not that being a professional athlete makes your opinion any more or less intelligent than anyone else's. But it is what makes people pay attention to that opinion -- so if you don't athlete, why would we care?

(Edited 8/28 to reword last paragraph and clarify my thought a little bit.)