While athletes in the NBA and the rest of the sports world pretend that they are taking a meaningful stand by taking a couple of days’ vacation from their season, it’s worth noting that there already is a model for achieving policy changes as a celebrity with President Trump in the White House, but athletes don’t want to take that route.
Kim Kardashian West helped push the president toward prison reform, meeting frequently at the White House to discuss the issue. She kicked off the issue by pushing Trump to commute the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson. In one 90-day span, she managed to secure commuted sentences for 17 inmates.
So why would the NBA not reach a hand across the aisle to work on police reform? The First Step Act passed through a Republican-controlled House and Senate in 2018, and Republican Sen. Tim Scott has already brought forward a police reform bill this year. All of the provisions in the Republican bill are also supported by Democrats, making it the most likely reform to pass right now.
The reason is politics. Just like Democrats blocked Scott’s bill so they can use police reform as an election-year issue, athletes and sports teams are doing the same. That’s why the Baltimore Ravens endorsed the bill brought forward by House Democrats that has no chance of passing. After all, LeBron James was the one that said change would start in November.
Athletes, like congressional Democrats, don’t care about police reform if they perceive that its enactment will help Trump. The Republican convention was sure to promote the First Step Act as an accomplishment this week, and Alice Marie Johnson spoke at the convention. Apparently, police reform isn’t actually that urgent: it can wait until January.
This isn’t about meaningful reform, and it never really was. If electing Democrats could cure the maladies of racial tensions, then Democrat-run cities such as Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, wouldn’t be burning. If athletes really cared about reform, they would start there before going up to the federal level. But even at the federal level, it’s not solutions they’re after, just Democratic victories in November.
