LeBron James. — David Zalubowski/AP/SIPA
An ambiguous tweet from LeBron James, targeting a police officer who shot dead a black teenage girl, earned the basketball player an outcry from the conservative American right, which accuses him of racism and irresponsibility.
“It’s your turn # Responsibility”, wrote the Los Angeles Lakers superstar on his Twitter account on Wednesday, illustrating a photo of the policeman who shot Ma’Khia Bryant on Tuesday, as she was about to stab another woman , in Columbus, Ohio.
“Racist diatribes” according to Donald Trump
The 36-year-old basketball player deleted the post a few hours later, “because it was being used to generate even more hate,” he explained, acknowledging that he wrote it out of “anger”. “This is not about a police officer,” but “the whole system, and they always use our words to create even more racism,” he explained. “What I am desperately calling for is for people to be made more accountable,” concluded LeBron James.
This contextualization did not stop the social networks from roaring, fed by several personalities of the conservative right, in the first place Donald Trump, who denounced “the racist diatribes” of the defending champion of the North American professional basketball league NBA . Comments “sectarian, malicious, insulting and degrading”, according to the former US president. “LeBron James drew hasty conclusions and incited violence against a police officer,” said Republican Senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton. “Isn’t that a problem for the NBA?” to Twitter? », Declared the former American president.
“Most Influential Sports Personality” in the United States
After publicly avoiding big social issues early in his career, LeBron James began speaking in 2012 after teenage Trayvon Martin was killed in cold blood by a white man in Florida. “It touched me directly because I have sons,” he explained in an interview with CNN in July 2018 about his two boys, born in 2004 (LeBron Jr) and 2007 (Bryce) . “Thinking that my son could have walked out of our house and never come back,” he described, “that triggered something. “
Since then, he has regularly taken a stand, in particular on issues related to racial discrimination. “I think it just matches the evolution and maturation of a man,” his longtime associate Maverick Carter told Bleacher Report in 2018. By virtue of his popularity, status and activism, “ LBJ ”can today be considered the most politically influential sports figure in the United States.
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