USA Today sports columnist shames Tom Brady for refusing to see how his white male heterosexual privilege lets him avoid talking politics

Sarah D | 1:18 PM on February 03, 2021

Tom Brady is a pretty divisive figure. Football fans seem to either love him or hate him.

And that’s fine. But if you’re gonna hate Tom Brady, maybe pick a better reason to hate him than USA Today sports columnist Nancy Armour has chosen:

Tom Brady’s politics aren’t the problem. It’s his refusal to recognize that his ability to enter and exit the debate when he chooses, to shield himself from accountability, is a privilege that Black and brown athletes don’t have. https://t.co/pb9PEhvgn0

— Nancy Armour (@nrarmour) February 2, 2021

Should we hear her out? Ah, what the hell? We might as well be generous:

Patrick Mahomes was asked at last year’s Super Bowl about being biracial. This year he’s been asked about speaking out in the wake of George Floyd, the Black man whose death at the knee of a white police officer sparked protests across the country.

Yet no one has asked Brady about the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, even though almost all of those who attempted the violent overthrow of our government were white, just as he is, and were incited by the man Brady has described as his friend.

“Tom Brady is speaking up as Tom Brady. He’s not asked to speak for white America,” said [David Leonard, author of “Playing While White: Privilege and Power on and off the Field”], who is also a professor of comparative ethnic studies and American studies and culture at Washington State.

“The follow-up question of, ‘I’m here just to play football,’ is ‘Well, who’s afforded that luxury? Who’s allowed to see sports as this apolitical space of distraction, of pleasure, of fun?’ ” Leonard said. “Seeing sports and living sports as an uncontested space is the privilege of whiteness. It’s the privilege of being a man. It’s the privilege of being a heterosexual athlete.