Darnell Taylor

Participation- Make Up

Today I read an article about the Los Angeles Lakers and how they call joined the protest of the case in New York where the police officer choked a kid out. They joined a silent protest in which they wore shirts that said "I Can't Breathe." The reason for the shirts is that the kid ended up dying and in a recording of the incident you can hear the victim saying that he can't breathe. For this article I chose to interview an African-American male in his 50's about the whole issue from the article. I asked his both about the instance with the police officer and also about the players wearing the "I can't breathe" shirts. He and I felt the same way in that we both feel like it is part of the job of being a professional athlete to be aware of issues, and to use their publicity to take a stance. He stated that he felt like the players should not be fined because they weren't hurting anyone, and were just displaying their opinions on a very important issue. I also asked whether the man felt like this was a race issue, or simply an issue of injustice in America. He told me that he feels like the issue is both because black men are constantly dying at the hands of white police officers and that is a problem of race. The numbers of white people versus black people dying at the hands of police officers is not equal, and that proves that there is definitely a race issue that needs to be solved. However, it is also an issue of injustice because the man was wing arrested for a non-violent crime, and should never have been put in a choke-hold in the first place.