Marcus Thuram does his dad proud
In making a stand - or, more accurately, by taking a knee - against institutiuonal racism, Marcus Thuram made a gesture of which his father Lilian must surely be proud. Musa Okwonga examines some of the wider implications of Thuram's moment of on-field activism.
Marcus Thuram had struck yet again. Having scored his ninth league goal of a thrilling season for Borussia Mönchengladbach, putting his team 2-0 up against Union Berlin, he jogged off to celebrate. However, the tone he struck was not euphoric, but mournful. He slowed down, and then sank to one knee: a gesture echoing that made famous by Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback who sacrificed his career to support Black Lives Matter. With this short, simple motion Thuram achieved three things. First, he asked for justice for George Floyd, the latest black person to be murdered by a white police officer’s excessive use of force. Secondly, he followed in the footsteps of his father Lilian, the legendary France international whose defence of equal rights for black people remains as elegant and enduring as his defence of his own goal. Thirdly, he created greater space within Europe for a conversation about racism far beyond the football field, space which all advocates for a more progressive world should swiftly occupy.
Looking at Marcus Thuram kneel, it makes you wonder which books are in his family library, which essays he was recommended to read across the dinner table. Patrice Evra once infamously mocked Lilian, saying, “It is not serious enough to walk with books on slavery, glasses and a hat to become Malcolm X”, but the Thuram household seems to be somewhere that serious study has taken place. Marcus clearly picked up enough from his father - who was recently accused of “anti-white racism” just for trying to address racial discrimination in greater depth - to understand the huge political power of sporting symbols. Thuram’s manager understood it too: after the win over Union, Marco Rose had warm words for his forward, telling reporters that “Marcus has made the point. He has set an example against racism that we all support”.
Thuram’s celebration is especially helpful for activists in German context because, while it is all too common for Europeans to point the finger at the US, there remain significant issues within this country. On the same weekend that Gladbach beat Union, the score ending four-one to Marco Rose’s side, I attended a Black Lives Matter rally opposite the US embassy in Berlin. There, beneath a cluster of trees, hundreds of us heard activists speaking with an uncommon fury. Diana Arce, the first to address the crowd, set the tone not by congratulating white people for their attendance, but by challenging them to do far better. Activism did not merely end by coming to a protest and leaving to feel good about yourselves, she reminded them. Activism is about doing the daily work, the difficult conversations with work colleagues, family and friends, the choices made in polling booths and boardrooms. Activism is about listening to black people about what they need, not dictating to them how best they should express their grief or their rage. A few white people there were unsettled by the tone of her remarks, and she quickly turned towards them. The white people in this crowd, she said, the ones who are already doing this work, who are fighting hard, who are organising, they know I am not talking about them. And if you think that I am referring to you, then maybe I am. Good, I thought, as Arce’s retort was greeted with rapturous applause. This is how it should be. As black people and those who support us, we must sometimes be less afraid to alienate.
“Looking at Marcus Thuram kneel, it makes you wonder which books are in his family library, which essays he was recommended to read across the dinner table. ”
Thuram, like Arce, was unafraid to alienate, with the kneel remaining a controversial gesture at all levels of American society. They know that upsetting a few people who would rather control if and how you speak out is nothing when set against the backdrop of still-unsolved killings in police custody. They know that a little discontent is nothing when we remember that in 2005 a man called Oury Jalloh, who had sought asylum in Germany following his departure from Sierra Leone, was found burned to death in a police cell in Dessau - and, to this day, no satisfactory explanation for his death has been provided. They know, as Dr. Martin Luther King reminded us in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, that the greatest obstacle to change is “the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”.
Thuram knew, as did his father, that football is one of the world’s powerful broadcast platforms, and that is why he gave every anti-racist the headline beneath which they could tell the world about those we have lost. Thanks to Thuram, more people will hear the names of Jalloh, of Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade and more, the seemingly endless number who have been the victims of police violence. Maybe, too, some of those people paying attention will go on to read Hannah Jones’ Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece about slavery, The 1619 Project; maybe they will read Ta Nehesi-Coates’ majestic essay, The Case for Reparations; or, if they want to read a scorched-earth polemic about racism in Europe, they will examine Aime ’ Discourse on Colonialism. Whatever path they take, they will know that there is a rich tradition of resistance to inhumanity which they are more than welcome to join. And whatever else Thuram goes on to do with his career, he can surely be certain that he did his dad proud.
For further listening, Musa and Ryan discussed racism on the latest podcast.