Texas lawmaker asks ‘where is the NBA’ while reading names of slain police officers
.jpg "Texas Rep. Chip Roy reads off the names of 43 officers killed in the line of duty on C-Span.")
A U.S. congressman from Texas took aim at the NBA — which has taken a unified stance against racial injustice — for its refusal to show support for law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.
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Rep. Chip Roy, while addressing the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday, called out the National Basketball Association after reading a list of the names of law enforcement officers who have been killed in the line of duty in 2020.
“Where is the NBA?” the Austin Republican asked while standing next to what appears to be a yellow, custom-made basketball jersey embroidered with the number 43 – the number of on-duty officers who have been killed this year. .
“Where are the names I just read of the 43 police officers who have died in the line of duty this year?” Roy asked. “I want to know that. I want to know where those names are.”
Roy also went after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for not addressing anti-police sentiment, saying “These names matter, too, Madam Speaker.”
The NBA made history with its restart on and off the court following 140 days of silence floating over the hardwood thanks to the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed more than 197,000 people in the U.S., according to John Hopkins University.
Of those deaths, at least 101 were police officers, McClatchy News reported on Sept. 3.
Less than a month after the NBA resumed on July 30, demonstrations surged across the United States following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot seven times in the back in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
At the same time, NBA players stepped up to their powerful platform to influence the national fight against racial inequality and police brutality.
On Aug. 26 — three days after the shooting — the Milwaukee Bucks refused to emerge from their locker room and led the charge in a playoffs boycott.
Eventually, five other NBA teams decided to temporarily boycott their games, too, with some MLS, WNBA and MLB squads joining the protest.
The NBA, along with other major sports leagues like the NFL and MLB, have been protesting racial injustice throughout their most recent seasons by taking either a knee during the national anthem or offering shows of unity like linking arms.
Before the restart, the NBA and WNBA chose to wear jerseys with social justice messages — such as Black Lives Matter, Equality and Justice — embroidered on the back. Many NBA players also wear Black Lives Matter T-shirts as their warm-ups.
The NBA created an approved list of social justice messages for players to wear, but did not include other options — such as those supporting law enforcement, according to media reports in July.
In the first eight months of 2020, it was reported that 164 Black people had been killed by police, which equals at least one Black person’s death a week, according to CBS News.
During the three months following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who died after now-charged Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck, police in the U.S. killed 288 people, according to Mapping Police Violence, 59 of whom were Black, CBS reported.
Black people make up around 13.4% of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — but they accounted for about 20% of people killed by police during that three month time period.
This story was originally published September 17, 2020 at 5:44 PM with the headline "Texas lawmaker asks ‘where is the NBA’ while reading names of slain police officers."