Kyle Korver, You’re on My List

I’ve been keeping a list. Don’t be alarmed, it’s not an Arya Stark kind of list. It’s a list you actually want to be on. And though it’s dismally short, I am happy to say it just got a new entry: NBA guard Kyle Korver.

Yesterday, my DMs, inbox and texts were flooded with the same link: Utah Jazz player Kyle Korver’s piece in The Players’ Tribune entitled simply “Privileged.” Korver penned a piece about how, over the years as a white player in a mostly black league (over 75% percent of NBA players are men of color), he gained insight and perspective on racism and his own white privilege. Korver describes how he came to see, as they say, that racism is not the shark, but the water. It all sounded very familiar to me — I went through the same process in the days, weeks, and months after the video of two black men being unjustly arrested in a Philadelphia Starbucks that I tweeted went viral last year.

Korver said a lot of important things — like how “as a white man, part of this systemic problem,” he wants to be part of the solution. He talked about the importance of educating himself, listening, supporting racial-justice-minded leaders, and how we white people have to know when to get out of the way and amplify the voices of…