Three thoughts on the news from Atlanta:

Sports and politics have been inextricably linked since the beginning of organized sport in the late 1800s. To argue otherwise is to argue from a privileged point of view that is able to view any kind of entertainment as a “distraction from the real world” rather than an extension of the world in which we live. It is to ignore the inextricable link between a certain brand of patriotism and American sport. It is a bad-faith argument designed to appeal to a certain political point of view and to raise money by politicians who aim to extend racist, sexist and homophobic agenda.s
If you have ever, even once, celebrated Jackie Robinson as an American hero, you have forever forfeited the right to argue against the politicization of sports.
To that end, throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, sports has helped drive social change in America, whether it was desegreation, the first Civil Rights Movement, the feminist movement and the second Civil Rights Movement that has emerged from the Black Lives Matter movement.