How Sports Protests Correlate to Pedagogy of the Oppressed
As I read Paulo Freire’s preface to Pedagogy of the Oppressed last week, I couldn’t help but connect it to the landscape of sports at the time. After all, as a journalism major who wants to go into sports media, I usually tend to look at the world through this lens. However I saw a major connection between the central message of Freire’s book and the actions of athletes across the nation last week, as well as people across the globe over the last few months.
One idea of Freire, a term known as “conscientizaçāo”, especially stood out to me, which “refers to learning to perceive social, political and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Freire 35). This concept directly correlates to last week’s boycott of games and practices by numerous teams across five sports leagues, although this is by no means a new trend in sports. Some major examples from the past few years include Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem during the 2016 NFL season and NBA players such as LeBron James wearing “I Can’t Breathe” shirts after the death of Eric Garner in 2014. Over fifty years ago now, Tommie Smith and John Carlos each raised a glove fist on the podium of the 1968 Olympics during “The Star-Spangled Banner” to protest racial discrimination. In fact, this article from The Undefeated traces the history of protests within sports all the way back to 1883.
However, up until the last few years, most of these protests have been rather isolated, and often quickly forgotten; now, athletes are banding together in unison in order to take action and push for widespread change, as seen in organizations such as The Players Alliance. This is where Freire’s ideas really come into play (pun intended), as he talks about conscientizaçāo and its effects on victims of injustice. I have seen many critics of these protests on Twitter, complaining about the increasingly outspoken nature of athletes over the last few months; these people serve as a direct correlation to the critics of conscientizaçāo as mentioned by Freire. Freire instead states that this concept of critical consciousness “enrolls [people] in the search for self-affirmation and thus avoids fanaticism” (36). After all, these athletes aren’t asking for much. They simply desire basic humanization.
Another relevant aspect of Freire’s ideas is the “fear of freedom” expressed by many victims of oppression (35). Freire suggests that individuals who are afraid of freedom are “actually taking refuge in an attempt to achieve security, which he or she prefers to the risks of liberty” (36). This likely explains why it has taken so long for successful people of color, including athletes, to speak out against the system of injustice in this country. After seeing players like Colin Kaepernick being blackballed by billionaire white owners after speaking out, it must have been very hard for other athletes to do the same thing at risk of losing their livelihoods, giving them this fear of freedom.
As I continue to read Pedagogy of the Oppressed, I am curious to see how Freire’s ideas continue to have relevance to current events, and how they impact my viewpoint of these ongoing protests.
