On James Blake and George Floyd
This is the first in a series or articles that we’re going to publish on racism and tennis in the United States of America.
George Floyd & James Blake
“It was something that was just so shocking at the time to feel that vulnerable, to know that you’re completely in their hands and at their mercy. It’s a difficult situation. I’ve been up nights since then thinking about what could have happened if I fought back.”
Those are the thoughts that former number four professional tennis player James Blake shared in a Tennis Channel piece about “Ways of Grace”, a book he published after being victim of the use of excessive force by a New York City police officer. The incident happened on September 9, 2015 and got caught on video by surveillance cameras of the Grand Hyatt hotel.
After the incident James just wanted to forget about it, but a conversation with his wife made him change his mind and because of it he became an activist against police abuse and other causes. James didn’t characterize the incident as racially motivated. He rather decided to focus on the demand that no one suffers because of the use of excessive force by the police.
In an interview he gave to ABC News on the incident, he said that the first words out of his mouth when he was tackled by the police officer were: “I’m going to 100% cooperate, I don’t want any incident”. The reporter asks him if he resisted and he answers: “No, and I feel lucky actually that I didn’t… because I could see how if I put my arms up or if I did anything it could be a sign of showing some sort of resistance and instead of having a little bruise on my leg I might have some broken bones or some actual injuries because it didn’t seem that he was slowing down and he was going to continue that tackle.”
When you listen to James talking about his reaction and what he was thinking as he was tackled and arrested, you can recognize the fear of the police that motivates mothers and fathers of black children to have the “talk” with their sons and daughters. The “talk” consists of a conversation to teach and explain your black child how to survive a police intervention and includes some of the things that James said: do not resist, and cooperate, among other things. It is a mortal risk to ask why you’re being detained if you’re black, let alone to claim your rights.
James Blake interview for ABC News
The response of William J. Bratton, Police Commissioner of New York City Police Department at the time, was that James had a right to be upset about the incident and that “we will very aggressively address it” because he “will not tolerate any type of excessive use of force on the part of my police”. They addressed the incident so aggressively that the punishment for the police officer that tackled James was to give up five vacation days.
It’s June 2, 2020 and unfortunately we all saw what happened to George Floyd. Floyd, as James, didn’t resist his arrest but ended up dead anyway at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers, when one of them kept putting pressure with his knee on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds and the other three did nothing to stop him.
In multiple cities, thousands of citizens of the United States of America have taken to the streets to protest a crime that repeats itself too regularly in the USA, but at the same time is very different than other murders of black people by the police. This time we got to see in a very clear way that Floyd didn’t represent any risk for the police officers. This time we got to see the face of the murderer as he rejoiced on the pain he was inflicting. This time other citizens were there for at least 8 minutes and 46 seconds demanding that the murderer withdraw his knee from Floyd’s neck. Not the camera nor the demands of the citizens made him stop.
On the government reaction to this assassination, just one of the officers was charged with 3rd degree murder and manslaughter. The other three officers haven’t been arrested or accused of anything. The arrest of the officer that was accused – the one with his knee on Floyd’s neck – came after people started protesting in Minneapolis. Will we be witnessing again the failure of the judicial system on delivering justice to black people in a timely manner? Will this horrible assassination be kept unpunished?
James has said that he kept thinking about what could have happened if he fought back. George Floyd, as so many others that didn’t resist police interventions, maybe because they remembered the “talk”, are not alive to think what could have happened if they fought back. They didn’t have the luck that James had, if one can put it that way. The sad truth is that not even acting according to the “talk” keeps black people from getting murdered by the police in the United States of America.
May the horrible death of George Floyd, the last one on a long list of black people murdered by police officers, serves the USA to acknowledge the systemic racism that is “more american than baseball” and start the necessary actions to stop it from taking human lives. At the end, that’s what we all are: HUMANS.