British footballer, Lyle Taylor, spoke out in an interview last week against the politics of Black Lives Matter and the motives of those who so ferociously support the organization.
His comments come after a teammate, Wilfried Zaha, announced earlier this month that he would no longer kneel before games as has become customary in much of the western world.
For his own part, Taylor, a 30-year-old striker for Nottingham Forest in the English Football League, agreed with his teammate and professed harsh words for the BLM movement.
On the UK radio show LBC (Leading Britain’s Conversation), the athlete vented frustrations over the commonplace stifling of dissenting opinions that has led to the presentation of black individuals, communities and cultures as single monoliths possessing absolute homogeneity in experience, opinion and principles.
Early in the conversation, Taylor acknowledged that, of course, “black lives do matter,” and of course, “racial inequality” should be fought against, but he was quick to draw a clear distinction between those beliefs and the beliefs of the organization BLM.
“But by the same token, we are hanging our hat on a Marxist group who are simply, they're looking to defund the police, they're looking to use societal unrest and racial unrest to push their own political agenda, that's not what black people are. We're not a token gesture or a thing to hang your movement on just because it's what's powerful and what's going on at the moment.”
For Taylor, the recognition of “social injustice” in the world, even coupled with the belief that action is required, in no way inevitably leads to the Marxism of BLM as the best mitigation option. It’s not as if defunding the police is the only solution to address policing problems within black communities, it just so happens, the BLM organization is attaching their radical policies to the coattails of a larger problem.
The footballer goes to talk of his white teammates who are forced to go along with the radical program for fear of their own livelihood.
“I also feel sorry for them…Even if they knew and agreed with what I'm saying and what other black players are saying they can't not take the knee. They cannot, a white player cannot stand there and say, ‘I'm not taking the knee because of this or that’, because they're branded racist.”
Taylor continued, speaking on the personal consequences he’s enduring by choosing to come out against kneeling and the larger BLM movement.
“I've been branded racist, and I've been racially abused by black people…When I came out and I said, I'm not taking the knee because of this that and the other. I was branded a racist, I was branded an Uncle Tom, and I was branded a coon. I was branded all of these things because, because I had an opinion that didn't sit with other black people.”
Taylor concluded his 5-minute conversation with host Nick Ferrari by highlighting that two things can be true at once. He believes racial inequality should be fought – and – he believes no one is bound to think a certain way due to the color of their skin.
“I can only speak from my own conversations and my own experience, I've got a lot of black friends who agree with me and I've got other black friends who say yeah but we need to do something about it. And I do agree with that. And there is something that needs to be done about it but I don't believe taking the knee is the right thing… There comes a point where we have to be able to voice our own opinion.”
To watch the full interview, click here.