“BLM started organizing in 2013 … But by 2020, after a series of police killings of unarmed Blacks that culminated with the suffocation of George Floyd, BLM had grown into the largest protest movement in the history of the United States,” he wrote. “But police brutality is merely the most dramatic and violent attack on the lives of African Americans. … The more insidious and damaging threat to the health, lives,and economic well-being of Black Americans is a health care system that ignores the fact that, though they are most in need of medical services, they actually receive the lowest level.”
Abdul-Jabbar finished the piece with a bit of advice, leaning on Bill Murray’s classic movie, Groundhog Day, for inspiration.
“It’s as if the Black community is trapped in Groundhog Day in which every day we fight racism, prove it exists, see gains, and then wake up the next day to all the same obstacles,” he wrote. “In the movie, Bill Murray escaped the cycle by becoming selfless, caring more about others’ needs than his greedy desires. That’s how America will escape this self-destructive behavior.”
