Saquon Barkley, You Really Dropped the Ball

It’s a really poor decision to put any human being on a pedestal, to place them in an elevated position simply because of their ability to write a song or light up a stage—or break thousands of tackles on the way to one of the greatest running back seasons in your favorite team’s history.

The pitfalls, of course, are that these people, being flawed and failing human beings, will invariably show how very human they are by doing something illegal, reckless, thoughtless, or just plain asinine.

Philadelphia Eagles superstar running back Saquon Barkley didn’t break any laws golfing with Donald Trump, but the rest of these adjectives surely apply: reckless, thoughtless, asinine.

It’s really hard to fathom the lack of self-awareness or the nonexistent grasp of recent history involved in one of the Philadelphia Eagles’ most universally beloved players taking a Championship victory lap by cozying up to an Olympic-level racist like Trump as if he were just playing a game. He wasn’t. He was stating with clarity that he’s either grossly uniformed or so buffered by the privilege of his position that he’s oblivious to the magnitude of the moment.

But what’s worse than Barkley’s lack of judgment here, is his tone deaf and defiant social media response to the millions who rightly wonder exactly what he was thinking, stating:

Hey, Saquon, I know you’ve been busy over the past year or so as the NFL season never really takes a break, but have you paid attention to a single thing this guy has done and said over the last decade—but specifically since he took office not long before you won the Super Bowl?

It sure seems like you haven’t, so let me catch you up real quick on the guy in the office you claim you’re respecting:
He’s rounding up people of color from their workplaces, family picnics, churches and kids’ carpool lines, and deporting them or shipping them to foreign prisons without due process
His Administration is trying to erase the History of Black people in America and to fully whitewash over the vile legacy of slavery in this country.
His party is working tirelessly to gerrymander, suppress, and legislate Black people out of the electoral process.
He’s painting every non-white person he’s arbitrarily targeting as a “gang member.”

Oh yeah, and he’s a 34-count felon and court-adjudicated sex offender who’s currently laying waste to funding for meal supports for kids in poverty, children’s cancer research, public schools across the country, and public television.

So yeah, maybe you might just wanna step back a bit before callously laughing in the face of tens of millions of Americans who take the office of the Presidency a hell of a lot more seriously than the guy currently holding it.

Maybe before firing off some childish, dismissive “have an amazing day, haters” garbage, you’ll actually consider what your alignment with this malignant bigot is saying to people who rightly or wrongly look up to you.

And yes, I know that isn’t fair, and that ultimately, outside of your superhuman abilities on the field, you’re just one very human human being whose choices will have ripples beyond themselves—but since you are in this elevated space, as much as your choices matter, your response to the criticism of those choices matters more.

As a fan, I’m really disappointed that, unlike many of your teammates, you didn’t read the room and realize what a bad look it was for you to be playing nice, with a guy who if you didn’t have fame or a Super Bowl ring, would have complete contempt for you.

But much worse than that, you didn’t have the maturity or humility to think beyond yourself, to people of color who don’t get White House invites, those who aren’t photo op props, and those whose only contact with this president, will be through the predatory legislation, dehumanizing language, and lawless abuse of power that places them in harm’s way.

I wonder during your 18-hole field trip with a dictator, how many people of color he took from their families, terminated from their jobs, and stripped of their retirement.

I hope the afternoon was worth it.

But seriously, talk about dropping the ball…