Black Lives Matter, and that includes Black athletes

Black Lives Matter protests have dominated the media sphere over the past few weeks. The extra-judicial killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers sparked protests across the nation. The protests were focused on more than just Floyd, though. The extra-judicial killing of Breonna Taylor while she was sleeping in her home in March became a topic of protest, along with a few other racist murders over the past few years.

It even goes deeper than that, though. These protests became about more than Floyd, Taylor, or the other 1,000 people killed at the hands of United States police officers every year. It became about the systemic racism that pervades our everyday life. About how statues, city names and other landmarks are named after slavers and Confederate generals. How many buildings used as marketplaces and government buildings nowadays are former slave trading posts. How descendants of those that owned plantations in the days of chattel slavery are still able to profit off of the ownership of those plantations.

The sports world is not immune to systemic racism. Our modern concept of sports, and specifically franchise ownership itself, still contains reminants of the countries past sins. A group of largely black people put their bodies on the line to produce profits for largely white group of owners. The black people do the hard labor, the white people reap the rewards.

This is exacerbated at the college level. The group of athlete’s — majority of which are…