Gary Charles turned his passion for sports into action for change. He created the Advancement of Blacks in Sports organization. Charles knows how the inequity in sports can affect the mental health of Black athletes and is making an impact on addressing things such as mental health, financial literacy, fair acknowledgment and more in the arena of Black sports.
Charles spoke with rolling out about the organization and how inequity affects Black athletes.
What inspired you to create the ABIS?
Watching the murder of George Floyd, I think all of us saw the same thing: that it was a total atrocity as to what was going on. I felt that I needed to say something. My heart moved. I put a video out, and it went viral. I won’t repeat the whole thing but, in a part of it, I said “White people, I understand you’re comfortable watching us march, but understand as a Black man we walk uncomfortable every day. I also understand that you don’t want to see any buildings being burned down. I just wish your ancestors felt the same way about burning down Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Black coaches, we see what’s going on, but what are we going to do about it?” It went on and on like that — and before you knew it, I was talking to coaches like Leonard Hamilton from Florida State and Dawn Staley of South Carolina. Before we knew it, we had the Advancement of Blacks in Sports.
How does inequity affect Black athletes and coaches?
Let’s talk about the Black coaches. In the NCAA, there are almost 1,000 coaches and only 16 percent are Black coaches. And it goes down to 10 percent if you’re at an HBCU school. But in a Power 5 school, 95 percent of the starters in basketball are minorities. In football, 93 percent of the minorities start. Think about that. But only 10 percent are head coaches. That’s not right.
What should young athletes and coaches do to get involved?
I have a million quotes, and one of them is “you don’t know what you don’t know.” That’s why we have to continue to educate. One of the things that we do at ABIS is we have a program called the ABIS financial coaching program, which is sponsored by JP Morgan. What we do is we have over 20 athletes at 10 to 12 different colleges around the country, and we teach athletes about how to budget their money. What about NIL? How do you save your money? What do you know about TransUnion and Equifax? They really don’t know, and we teach them about investments. This is a way for us to get to these athletes at a young age. As we’re teaching these things, we also talk to them about what’s going on out there. As far as younger athletes get involved, become a member of ABIS because, once you become a member and we start to have this conversation, we need to hear your voice.
