Impassioned Russell Wilson: ‘Racism is heavier than ever.’ Yet face of Seahawks sees hope
It was Russell Wilson as impassioned, direct and real as he’s ever been in his eight years as the face and the voice of the Seahawks franchise.
Last week’s killing of black man George Floyd while pinned face-down to a street under the knee of a police officer in Minneapolis, and the national protests and uprisings since, have Wilson in only one frame of mind.
Change.
Because Black Lives Matter.
“To be honest with you, I don’t even want to talk to you about football right now. None of that matters,” Wilson said on an online Zoom call Wednesday from his offseason home in southern California.
“The reality is black people are being murdered in the street. They are getting shot down. The reality is, it’s not like that for any other race.
“It’s staggering to see.
“I see my kids. I see a man get murdered on the street. And it’s pretty heavy, you know. It’s pretty heavy to watch somebody get murdered like that... Ultimately, it brings a lot of pain. There is a lot pain in the history of America. There is a lot of, in my opinion, hate in America. There’s a lot of division. It’s something that I pray we can be better as people. I pray that decisions are made to justify this situation, and many others that happened in the past. ...
“Police brutality is staggering. ...Even in Seattle, my home, watching some of the things that are happening there (during protests), it’s pretty heavy.
“I don’t have all the answers. But the answers I do know is, my being African American, me being black, is a real thing in America. It’s a real thing in the sense of the history, and the pain. Even my own family, personally, my great, great grandparents were slaves, and everything else. So there is a lot of history there.
“What I am praying for is, we learn how to love. We learn how to communicate. ...
“I am hopeful that we can make a change. I am hopeful that we are going to vote. I am hopeful that we are going to pick the right leaders.”
Wilson has spoken up if not always out numerous times over the years from his platform as one of America’s most recognizable athletes. He’s talked often on the need for more love, more faith, more equality, in our country. But Wilson, who signed the richest contract in NFL history last year, is often somewhat famously guarded on what he says and the image he projects.
He wasn’t guarded Wednesday.
Two days earlier, his teammate and franchise co-pillar Bobby Wagner had challenged white media members and citizens to educate themselves on what it is like to be black in the U.S.
Four years after Colin Kaepernick knelt during national anthems to protest racial inequality and police brutality in our nation, does Wilson feel whites have made any progress at all in understanding blacks?
“At all? I hope so,” Wilson said. “That’s such a big question, talking about white America.
“I would say, I don’t think everybody understands, because you don’t have to go through it everyday, Gregg, to be honest with you. You get pulled over, it’s a lot different: ‘Where were you going? What’s happening?’ versus the other way around. You know, sometimes the reality is we have to fear what may happen. And there’s a big difference in that.
“Think about drugs. When a person gets arrested for the same, exact drug, the reality is the kid may be an 18-year-old, 17-year-old kid or a 19-year-old kid and he’s white, versus black, the reality is in our America right now—which is a shame—the reality is the 19-year-old white kid versus the 19-year-old black kid is going to be looked at differently. The 19-year-old black kid is probably going to be thrown in jail longer, have the longer process, and everything else. And that’s a terrifying reality.
“And that needs to change. We need to change. We need to make a difference. We need to actually make sure we are voting for the right people. And we need to make sure we are doing the right things that allow change...across the board, of our systems and our systematic flow of how we do things has to change, as well. ...
“I am hopeful that we can make a change. I am hopeful that we are going to vote. I am hopeful that we are going to pick the right leaders.”
Wilson was asked, what has changed for him to speak so forcefully now?
“I don’t think anything’s changed,” he said. “I think racism is heavier than ever.”
He described moving with his family from his birthplace 31 years ago in Cincinnati to Richmond, Va., and his father, a lawyer, telling him as a kid and a young teen at the start of the 2000s not to put his hands in his pockets in public and around police.
“The fact my dad had even had to tell me that is a problem,” Wilson said.
The son of a mother who was an emergency-room nurse, who played with whites at a private high school in Richmond, the Collegiate School, described what happened to him soon after the Seahawks won the Super Bowl in Feb. 2014. Wilson was in a restaurant in California. A man he described as “an older white gentleman” told Wilson “that’s not for you.”
Wilson, a freshly minted Super Bowl champion, nationally recognized, was astonished. He thought the man was joking. He told him he did not appreciate being talked to that way. The older white man walked off. Wilson said he didn’t escalate the moment, remembering what his late father had always told him.
The quarterback stood in the restaurant six years ago, a black man in modern-day America, and thought, “Man, this is really still real” in our country.
Yet Wilson sees hope.
He said his white teammates—70 of the 90 players on Seattle’s 90-man offseason roster are black—have been strong advocates for his concerns and the cause this week during the Seahawks’ daily Zoom calls. Those calls were supposed to be on football but coach Pete Carroll has let become intense, probing, player-led discussions on race in our country.
“Our white teammates have stepped up,” Wilson said, mentioning veteran Luke Willson, fellow tight end Jacob Hollister and others. “They’ve said, ‘I want to do something around this. I want to do something to change. I want to do my part, in whatever small part that I can have or whatever big part that I can have. I want to be able to make a difference.’
“It was powerful.
“Yeah, it doesn’t heal the situation. It doesn’t make it perfect. We can’t get it back, unfortunately.
“But it allows us to look forward. And hope.”
Wilson said the Seahawks have left those meetings this week “with an understanding.
“Hopeful? I’m always hopeful, because I never want to be the other way around,” he said. “But I am also realistic, too, because I know this is going to take some time. This is going to take real change. This is going to take real, significant change. ...
“I believe we are going to do everything we can to be a part of that change. I think that is what is hopeful for our team. And hopeful for our city, because I know a lot of people look up to us as a city and as a team. A lot of people look up to the Seattle Seahawks to make a difference, and to be on the forward end of, the progressive end of, change.
“I know that we will do everything we can to make as much of a difference as we can.”
This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 3:31 PM.
