The Last Dance: There’s More To The Story
“The problems we face didn’t happen overnight and they won’t be solved tomorrow, but if we all work together, we can foster greater understanding, positive change and create a more peaceful world for ourselves, our children, our families, and our communities.”
– Michael Jordan
Although Michael Jordan has been criticized for his perceived silence regarding social issues, the beauty of his perceived silence is that he’s strategically playing a role in bringing big impact to communities that are undervalued and overlooked.
It’s important to know that when Jordan stated that quote with Uninterrupted, he also announced his 1 million dollar donation to the Institute for Community-Police Relations and $1 million for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Additionally, he’s donating all of the proceeds from the docuseries to a mentoring organization, which will amount to approximately $3-$4 million. His support of these entities should not be waivered. This support needs to be acknowledged and the role the community plays in sports and social change, which is why I’m extremely happy that the release of “The Last Dance” came during the social distancing mandate.
It’s a unique time to uplift narratives of athletes from their perspective and raise awareness about their stories and values within the world we exist.
My interest in stories like Michael Jordan derives from my personal experiences as an athlete and first-generation born American. With immigrant parents, it was quite challenging to adjust to homogenous communities that promoted our looks as erotic and language barriers as a challenge, as well as ignored the lack of adjustments to be more inclusive of our lived experiences and values.
However, playing sports always made me and my family feel more alive and connected than anything else that was offered. These experiences have shaped the way I live and how I engage with the communities, I adore.
In New Orleans, I wake to the opportunity to witness, participate and lead the movement of sport and social change along with committed community partners through a flagship initiative, Sport for Good New Orleans powered by Laureus Sport for Good Foundation USA. This community of non-profit leaders, government agencies, educators, higher education institutions, professional teams, athletes, and many additional stakeholders have teamed up to understand the challenges our young people face on a systemic level while building internal systems that create inclusivity and participation of those that we serve and have lived experiences.
As this collective navigate the systems in which we work and our young people and community interact with, we must also recognize our roles and responsibility to that system through sport. Fortunately enough, people recognize that sport is powerful, but aren’t familiar in the exact ways it influences and facilitates change. In the local context, especially now, Sport for Good New Orleans’s goal is to educate, develop, and build that framework throughout those systems.
Here are some examples to better understand the role of sport for social change in the New Orleans community:
Bridging the Racial and Economic Divide- The community of sport allows us to connect and unify in ways little else. However, it may also be very inaccessible and costly, especially considering those who have access to the pay-to-play model and the recreational side of sport and those who do not. As we understand this, we understand that larger societal and economic issues of our community, which include the racial, financial, health, education, and many other disparities. What’s beautiful is that we are able to use sport to bridge our community and address these issues through equitable systems in our sport for good community.
The Power of the Education System in Sport – Our education system has the capacity to provide more than academic success. This is a space where our young people develop peer relationships, evolve socially and emotionally, learn and engage in creative interests, and much more. As sport captures these developmental aspects of a young person, we must cultivate spaces in this system for young people to excel, especially as sport and physical activity are reduced in the education setting. Therefore, it’s crucial for the sport for good community to education this system on the positive impacts of sport on academic attainment, school safety, peer to peer relationships, and more.
The Health Continuum in Sport- The role of quality sport is critical in the social and emotional development of a young person’s life, especially if a that young person has faced social, environmental, and physical trauma. In order to shift and fully support the health continuum, we offer workshops, trainings, and small capacity-building grants to sport programs and individuals to ensure they have access to community assets and information that supports the positive development of the sports field and our young people.
To close, there’s so much more to cover when it comes to sport in our society. However, we must recognize the beauty of sport will always be constant. It will exist with or without the physical play. That’s the power of sport now as we face COVID, and that will always be the power beyond the unfortunate circumstances, locally, nationally, and globally.