NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the NFL’s evolution on protesting
Activist and NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the NFL’s reversal on protesting in the wake of George Floyd’s death and how now is the time to maintain public pressure on the league to ensure its continued progress on social justice issues.
Video Transcript
SIBILE MARCELLUS: I'd love to get your thoughts on the NFL's kneeling controversy. You mentioned it briefly before. What do you expect in terms of moving forward? Did you expect that big of a backlash to Drew Brees' comments and the NFL actually changing their stance?
KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR: Oh yeah, I expected that because what happened to George Floyd, that opened a lot of people's eyes. They got an idea of what Colin Kaepernick was talking about four years ago now when he was demonstrating and people wanted to dismiss him. They wanted to dismiss him because it was just-- it was a subject nobody wanted to talk about. He was pointing out something that nobody wanted to talk about, and we see what the result is by that issue not being dealt with earlier, so many deaths between then and now.
It's really not a surprise at all that the NFL got on the right side of history here. We have Republican legislatures-- George Romney was marching with the demonstrators and said black lives matter. I mean, I was shocked. My mouth fell open on that one. You know, it's a new day, and I think we will definitely, with be people that are understanding what this is all about and lending their voice to the righteous protest, I think we're going to have some significant change.
And we will maintain this discussion. I don't think people will be quiet about it anymore. We will maintain the discussion. We will keep the pressure on. Now is the time for people to wake up and do that.