San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich held no punches when speaking about the president’s remarks over the weekend at today’s media day. Pop said the president was delusional if he thought “NFL owners and players locking arms during The singing of The National Anthem at yesterday’s football games were about him or patriotism” Popovich also spoke on “white privilege” in the United States.
“Obviously, race is the elephant in the room, and we all understand that. Unless it is talked about constantly, it’s not going to get better….Oh’ that again? They pulled the race card again? Why do we have to talk about that? Well, because it’s uncomfortable. There has to be an uncomfortable element in the discourse for anything to change, whether it’s the LBGT community, or women’s suffrage, race, it doesn’t matter. People have to be made to feel uncomfortable, and especially white people, because we’re comfortable. We still have no clue as to what being born white means. And if you read some of the recent literature, you realize there is really no such thing as whiteness. We kind of made it up. That’s not my original thought, but it’s true.
“It’s hard to sit down and decide that, yes, it’s like you’re at the 50-meter mark in a 100-meter dash. You’ve got that kind of a lead, yes, because you were born white. You have advantages that are systematically, culturally, psychologically, there. And they have been built up and cemented for hundreds of years. But many people can’t look at it, it’s too difficult. It can’t be something that is on their plate on a daily basis. People want to hold their position, people want the status quo, people don’t want to give that up. Until it’s given up, it’s not going to be fixed.”
-Images via SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS
