NAACP asks Black athletes to stand against gerrymandering. We should all listen | Opinion

Don’t go somewhere that doesn’t respect and value you. That’s the crux of the NAACP’s new “Out of Bounds” campaign , which comes in response to the moves several southern states have made to weaken or erase Black voting power in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision. Yes, the NAACP is asking that Black athletes, football and basketball players in particular, “withhold their commitments” or transfer from public colleges and universities in eight southern States.

It also wants alums, donors and fans to stop buying tickets and merch. “The NAACP will not watch the same institutions that depend on Black athletic prowess to fill their stadiums and their bank accounts remain silent while their states strip Black communities of their voice,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in the statement announcing the campaign . But what the NAACP is really asking is that Black athletes and those who support them think about who is truly valuing them, and not reward states that will turn their backs on these young men and women the second their uniforms are off.

For athletes to remind themselves they have worth beyond their athletic talents, and anyone who doesn’t recognize that is best avoided. Dive deeper: NAACP pushes boycott of SEC, ACC schools. How feasible is the movement?

A state does not deserve to benefit — financially, materially, emotionally — from young Black men and women when it is actively working to strip them, their friends and their families of their basic rights. The U. S.