On Thursday, Tennessee Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill, who recently signed a four-year, $118-million contract extension, stated that America was “founded upon racist ideas.”
Standing with his teammates, who along with him had skipped practice to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake, Tannehill followed a speech from teammate Kelvin Byard, a defensive safety for the team, who had stated:
We feel that with all the recent events that have happened in our country, not only just this year, not only in the past year, but the past hundreds of years, we decided that it’s time to take a stand today. And we feel that with this moment right here, in today, with my brother Ryan standing next to me and all my brothers standing behind me, we wanted to show solidarity and be unified and say that we’re tired. We’re sick and tired of seeing the things that have been going on on social media for entertainment. Seeing our black brothers and sisters being murdered by police like it’s nothing. And I feel like it’s time for a change …
Tannehill took Byard’s statement about “events that have happened in our country” for the “past hundreds of years’ and elaborated on them, positing that the United States had been “founded on racist ideas”:
Like Kelvin said, these systematic oppressions have been going on a long time. For hundreds of years. This country was founded upon racist ideas with slavery brought here from the day of foundation. And those ideas have persisted throughout the last hundreds of years. It’s gonna take time until we can get those all out. But we’re tired of it.
“We’re tired of dealing with the systematic oppression,” he continued. “We’re tired of dealing with excessive force. We’re tired of seeing black men and women die in situations where they should be walking home and spending the night with their families. It’s sickening; it’s sickening to just know that they have to worry about their kids coming home at night. I have two young kids that because the color of their skin I never have to worry about if they get pulled over by a police officer that they’re gonna make it out of that interaction alive and that’s a sick fact of the world that they’re living in.”
Tannehill, a native Texan, was signed by the Miami Dolphins in the 2012 NFL draft after playing for Texas A & M in college. He was the first quarterback selected by the Dolphins in the first round since Dan Marino in 1983. In 2016 he led the Dolphins to their first playoff slot since 2008. He was traded to the Titans in March 2019; in the playoffs his Titans upset the New England Patriots and then defeated the Baltimore Ravens before losing to the eventual Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship game.