Washington Mystics guard Natasha Cloud wrote an essay reacting to the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and took aim at what she called “America’s systems of power” for allowing white supremacy to flourish.
Eyewitness video showed a police officer, later identified as Derek Chauvin, kneeling on Floyd’s neck for roughly nine minutes, which led to the victim’s death. Chauvin on Friday was charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter after he and three other police officers were fired for the incident.
Cloud, who is black, was one of the scores of athletes and coaches both black and white who spoke out on social media over the past several days of protests that broke out in both Minneapolis and elsewhere around the country. Her article is featured front-and-center on the home page of The Players’ Tribune.
“America’s systems of power exist so that, in 2020, George Floyd can have a knee forced on his neck by a white police officer, by someone whose job it was to serve and protect him, for almost nine minutes in broad daylight — nine minutes in broad daylight — even after he had become unresponsive,” Cloud wrote. “America’s systems of power exist so that an acceptable response to a cop killing George Floyd is to make excuses for the cop.”
Cloud said that white citizens who stand by and choose not to pay attention to police brutality against unarmed black people were complicit.
“You know what’s harder to shine a light on?” she wrote. “The millions of people who are helping to protect those racist cops, and who are helping to insulate those in power, by staying ’neutral.’ That right there is what’s exhausting to me. It’s all the people who think that — in 2020!! — they can still somehow just politely opt out of this (expletive).”
She also thanked her Mystics teammate, WNBA MVP Elena Delle Donne, for sharing a Nike-produced video with a message against racism on her Instagram.
The essay was hardly out of character for Cloud, a vocal activist, including for racial justice issues.
“If you’re silent, I don’t (expletive) with you, period,” Cloud concluded. “Because I’m just out here trying to stay alive. And your knee is on my neck.”
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