No, Saquon, you can't have it both ways
You can respect the office of the president, but you don't have to hang out with the current one.
By Shalise Manza Young
For some people, the concept of not being able to have it both ways is difficult to grasp.
Today’s case study: Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley.
Barkley spent parts of two days with President Donald Trump, including the Eagles’ Monday visit to the White House to celebrate their winning Super Bowl LXI. He played at least a partial round of golf with Trump, flew to Washington, D.C., with him on Air Force One, and flashed a big smile for the now-customary Oval Office photo op.
But when floods of fury filled his social media pages, Barkley played dumb. He tweeted: “lol some people are really upset cause I played golf and flew to the White House with the PRESIDENT. Maybe I just respect the office, not a hard concept to understand. Just golfed with Obama not too long ago…and look forward to finishing my round with Trump! Now ya get out of my mentions with all this politics and have an amazing day.”
That’s not how this works, Saquon.
You didn’t just present, with some of your teammates and your coach, a custom jersey to Trump. You didn’t just join your teammates in laughing at Trump’s lame jokes in his meandering comments during the ceremony on the South Lawn.
You didn’t spend time with just any president. You spent time—extra time—with this president.
This president has a long history of racial animus toward Black people – your people. As you were yukking it up in the Oval, the attorney general chosen by this president basically set fire to the remaining tatters of the Voting Rights Act by reassigning the FBI leadership team that enforced federal laws protecting the right to vote—laws you’ve benefited from thanks to people who look like you putting their lives on the line.
This president said nothing as his Defense secretary forced works by Maya Angelou to be removed from the Naval Academy’s library but not Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” This president believes there are “Black jobs,” and he implied being an air-traffic controller is not one of them.
This president has made it pretty clear that the only Black people he’ll respect, at least to their faces, are athletes, entertainers and/or those who flatter him.
That’s why many Black people expressed such anger with your presidential field trip.
But it’s not just palling around with Trump despite the decades of anti-Black behavior, which continues to this day, that has folks so upset, though that is reason enough.
Trump is the Fanta-shaded face of a fascistic administration that seems bent on afflicting as much cruelty as possible on as many people as possible and to grift as much money as possible in the process.
To mingle with him so publicly is to tacitly endorse that barbarism. It indicates that you’re OK with women like PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk being kidnapped off the street by masked, plain-clothes agents.
That, as a father, you’re OK with life-sustaining foods meant for the poorest children in the world rotting and medicines keeping parents alive going unused after Trump’s administration ended the wildly successful program that distributed them.
That you’re OK with this New York Times headline: “A mother and father were deported. What happened to their toddler?”
That you’re OK with a hilariously unqualified Health and Human Services secretary peddling absolute fiction about vaccinations that have been so successful for so long they’ve eradicated or nearly eradicated diseases that once killed scores of people annually.
That you’re OK with massive targets being placed on the backs of trans girls and women for just wanting to exist.
And that’s an extremely short list of the actions Trump’s administration has taken that he has signed off on.
If you do approve of them, stand on business and say it. Don’t be agitated by those of us who are disappointed that in the span of five years you went from tweeting that “racism and injustice cannot exist” and making a large donation to the fund for George Floyd’s daughter to hamming it up with a man who allegedly had to be talked out of shooting protestors marching in support of Black lives but pardoned the white men and women who attacked the U.S. Capitol in an act of sedition.
Trump’s beliefs and behaviors are all antithetical to what this country has professed itself to be: a beacon of hope, a moral compass for the rest of the world, a place that fought a war to wrest itself of a king and instead make “we, the people” its guiding principle.
You validated him, and Trump’s team jumped on the chance to use you in propaganda, posting photos of the two of you all over social media.
You might respect the office of American president, Saquon, but Trump makes it clear daily, if not hourly, that he does not.
Oh, and one last thing: In the days leading up to the Super Bowl in February, Trump picked the Kansas City Chiefs to win, not your Eagles.
Have an amazing day.
Shalise Manza Young was most recently a columnist at Yahoo Sports, focusing on the intersection of race, gender and culture in sports. The Associated Press Sports Editors named her one of the 10 best columnists in the country in 2020. She has also written for the Boston Globe and Providence Journal. Find her on Bluesky @shalisemyoung.
Fantastic commentary. It's about time someone told these privileged few - no matter what color they are - can't have it both ways.
Spot-on!