There’s good news and bad news regarding the English Premier League. The good news, from my perspective, is that the EPL will resume its football season next Wednesday, June 17. The bad news is that all players will wear the words “black lives matter” on their jerseys.
As I understand it, for the first 12 matches — those through June 22 — the names of the players on the back of their shirts will be replaced by “Black Lives Matter.” Thereafter, all players will wear the BLM logo.
Accordingly, I probably will skip the first 12 matches and maybe those that follow.
Black lives do matter. The statement follows from the foundational proposition that all lives matter.
In context, however, the appearance of these words on footballers’ shirts is not just the expression of a truism. It is also a statement that black lives don’t matter to Americans in general or, at a minimum, to America’s police police force. (Why else wear an obviously true statement on a football jersey?) And, in my view, it is a statement of support for the political movement that goes by the “black lives matter” slogan and holds the beliefs I’ve just referenced.
The EPL should not embrace a political movement. That’s true regardless of the movement in question.
In this case, moreover, the movement is one that (1) expresses a position on the nature of policing in America — i.e., that it’s “systemically racist” and (2) seeks to undermine American policing in ways that will likely lead to a large net loss of black lives.
It’s bad enough for a British sports league to take an official position on an American political movement and, thereby, its agenda. When it takes a position that is likely to reduce public safety in America, to the detriment of both blacks and whites, that’s when I start thinking about boycotting the league.
The EPL fan base in American is mostly liberal. These fans will, I assume, be delighted with the league’s endorsement of the BLM movement.
There are conservatives in America who devotedly follow the EPL, though — a growing number of them. They might want to consider tuning out all or part of the season’s remainder.
Italy’s Serie A will resume play around the same time the EPL does. Serie A is comparable in quality to the EPL, and some of its matches are televised in the U.S. If it resists endorsing BLM, American soccer fans might find Serie A a satisfactory substitute for the EPL.
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