It started when Richard Haalgerd, a third-string point guard for the Milwaukee Bucks, kneeled and raised a clenched fist during the National Anthem before a game with the Chicago Bulls. Haalgerd was protesting never getting a real chance to play in a sport dominated by black athletes — “Disproportionately dominated,” he says. “There is real discrimination against white athletes in the NBA and it has to stop. I can dribble and shoot three-pointers as good as any home boy.”
The protests spread to the NFL when Herkel Bronkowski, a roster linebacker for the Cleveland Browns, kneeled before the National Anthem in a game against the Dallas Cowboys and repeated Haalgerd’s complaints vis-à-vis football. He is co-founder and front man for White Athletes Matter, devoted to eradicating “racial prejudice in the sports world.”
“Hey, man, I’m not unwoke. I’m, like, totally woke,” says Bronkowski, his long Viking-like blonde locks curling over his shoulders. “Here’s the deal: It’s been, like, discovered that there’s no biological differences between men and women, so you can be whatever you say you are. And it’s the same story for races. We’re all the same, white, black, brown, whatever — we’re all created equal. So how come there hasn’t been a white cornerback in the NFL since the Vince Lombardi era? Where’s the modern Dick Butkus? How come all three starting linebackers for the Browns are black, and I’m just a token honky warming the bench every game? And let’s face it — Cleveland Browns is just as offensive as Washington Redskins. Imagine if we were called the Cleveland Whites! So you got to call a spade a… uh, strike that. You got to call it out for what it is, man — systemic racism.”
“The black population in America is 13%,” Bronkowski continued, “but the NFL is 70% black and the NBA is 80% black. How fair is that? But it’s not just whites dissed in football and basketball — whites are 60% of the population, but 99% of the NHL! So we’ve also got to give blacks more representation in ice hockey and other white-dominated sports, like ski jump and synchronized swimming. We’ve got to have more equality of outcome in this country. So that’s my mission, man. I guess you could say I’m the Jackie Robinson of the 21st century.”
