[Isiah Thomas\Racial Justice]
Thomas: “We’ve been waiting for centuries now for us to have this conversation about the oppressive … system that Blacks are forced to live under in this country.”
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NBA legend Isiah Thomas implored all Americans to do more to fight racial injustice, pointing to the wave of protests this week from professional athletes as inspiration.
“We’ve been waiting for centuries now for us to have this conversation about the oppressive … system that Blacks are forced to live under in this country,” Thomas said on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “What I see that’s happening in our country is eerily very similar to what we were marching and fighting against back in the ’60s, the ‘50s, the ‘70s, the ‘80s, the ’90s and now into the 2000s.”
Thomas, a two-time NBA champion with the Detroit Pistons and a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, noted that his comments Friday came on the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington in 1963, where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic “I Have a Dream” speech.
Then, as now, Thomas said demonstrators are simply asking: “Let us have an equal opportunity in terms of the American dream.”
The movement for racial justice that is sweeping the U.S. this summer — sparked in May by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis and again this week by the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin — is grassroots, Thomas said.
“This is an organic uprising of all different classified races and colors out in the streets, marching and protesting, saying we want a better America for all, not just for one classified class of people,” he said.
Read the rest of this story here: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/28/nba-legend-isiah-thomas-calls-on-all-americans-to-fight-racism.html
