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Notes from America with Kai Wright

Serving Up Social Justice

Notes from America with Kai Wright

WNYC Studios

News Commentary, Politics, History, News

4.41.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 September 2020

⏱️ 45 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Many teams have been playing without crowds this year but stadiums still have a captive audience. Sports editor and “Edge of Sports” podcast host Dave Zirin joins us for the hour as we explore how and when in our history athletes have taken a stand for civil rights and social justice. WNBA point guard Renee Montgomery talks about what led her to sit out the 2020 season to pursue change and uplift Black communities.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Kywright and this is the United States of anxiety, a show about the unfinished business of our history in its grip on our future.

0:11.0

A point to end it.

0:12.8

Nail the Osaka wins her second U.S.

0:17.2

It's quite sad that seven masks isn't enough for the amount of names.

0:21.6

Sure are in this country over a threatened boycott by Negro athletes.

0:26.0

Then most of them decided that participation in the Olympic would further the cause of civil rights.

0:31.0

The only thing that we are demanding is that we be allowed to move

0:34.7

a heented like any other American city.

0:37.0

Welcome your world champions!

0:40.0

An affecting world.

0:41.0

Up until about 10 minutes ago, we thought we were going to have a game.

0:44.0

This is a walk of life when you wake up and you black.

0:47.0

That is what it is.

0:48.0

It shouldn't be a movement. It should be a lifestyle.

0:50.0

This is who we are. This weekend in what will probably be remembered as one of the great moments in tennis.

1:02.0

Naomi Osaka won the U.S. Open and a stirring come from behind victory.

1:07.0

She had arrived for the match wearing a face mask bearing Tamir Rice's name.

1:12.0

She wore seven different masks during the tournament, each with the name of a person killed in anti-Black violence.

1:19.0

Osaka is just one among many, many high-profile athletes who are now willing to literally wear their

1:25.6

politics on their sleeves.

1:28.0

Most professional sports leagues, they're dominated by young black talent. They're the players, the stars, the source of billions of dollars in

1:36.5

revenue and yet the teams and the leagues in which they play and the huge range of companies that profit from that play too, these are overwhelmingly white.

...

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