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***sve7en*** · 05-30-2020, 02:05 PM

[573 words]

This is a weird thing for me to write. You’ve potentially seen me on my show or interacted with me, but if you haven’t you should know that I am white. I won’t hide that and I get that I write this from a position of privilege where I don’t have the first hand experience to draw from. I don’t mean to misrepresent the struggles of minorities in America, or make light of them. This last week has shaken me, like many instances like this have done before, and while I have been a voice in other avenues of my life I wanted to bring that here as well. Some of you might think this has no place in a sim league, and I understand that. Some of you might come to the SHL to get away from aspects of real life like this, and I apologize for taking that aspect of the league away from you.

With love,
sve7en

This is the eighth entry on The Player's Tribune in an ongoing series following hockey prospect Jimmy Wagner through his journey of playing professionally. You can read his first piece “Hey Dad” here, or view the index of his entries here.

This is not an anecdote of what it’s like to be a black hockey player. Not exactly at least. That story already exists in far better words than what I would come up with thanks to both Wayne Simmons and Akim Aliu.

About two and a half years ago, a man by the name of Sterling Brown was tased and arrested by Milwaukee police officers.

His crime? He was illegally parked across two handicap spaces.

Oh, but he’s black.

And he’s an NBA player, so I guess he’s tall?

A man should have been given a parking ticket, and instead he was tased, assaulted, and taken to jail. In the city that he represented on the basketball court the following day.

Earlier this week, a man by the name of George Floyd was murdered, on film, by Milwaukee police officers.

His crime? He paid at a deli with an allegedly counterfeit $20 bill.

He’s also black.

Unarmed black people are dying at the hands of the police in America.

It’s not something that you really want to bring up when the media asks you “what’s been the hardest thing to get used to when transitioning to the SMJHL?” How do you explain the concept that Eric Garner was on Austrian news, that you saw guys that you adored like LeBron James wearing “I can’t breathe” shirts, and that it is something that lives near the front of your mind as a young black athlete that now plays in the United States?

It won’t matter what I say in that situation. It won’t matter what I do in that situation. It won’t matter that I’m an athlete in that situation. For Sterling Brown, George Floyd, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery, Ezell Ford, Tamir Rice, John Crawford, and hundreds of others, the thing that mattered most was that they were black.

I know black people aren’t the only people dying, and that a massive majority of white people are good. I know I have had interactions with white cops in Charlotte who are undoubtedly good. The institutionalized racism in America is real though, and black people are dying when they don’t need to.

That needs to change.

#blacklivesmatter

Jimmy Wagner
Captain
Carolina Kraken

ACapitalChicago · 05-30-2020, 02:13 PM

Scream this from the rooftops, every single word here needs to be said and heard far more than they are. This is a well written article that brings up many good points that should be acknowledged more. Institutional and systemic racism does exist in America, and acting otherwise only perpetuates the system. Thank you for writing this, 7.

S66 Damian Littleton

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***sve7en*** · 05-30-2020, 04:33 PM

05-30-2020, 02:13 PMACapitalChicago Wrote: Scream this from the rooftops, every single word here needs to be said and heard far more than they are. This is a well written article that brings up many good points that should be acknowledged more. Institutional and systemic racism does exist in America, and acting otherwise only perpetuates the system. Thank you for writing this, 7.

EricNCSU · 06-19-2020, 04:45 PM

I missed this when it first got published. Thanks for this, both from your players perspective and as you the user (matching donations to BLM on your podcast).

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