Our rights and freedoms are being canceled, overturned, and done away with at a rapid rate and it has come time to fight the MAGA agenda on multiple fronts.
The Guardian is reporting that the NAACP has launched a sweeping campaign urging Black athletes, fans, and alumni to boycott major public university athletic programs across the South over what the organization says are escalating attacks on Black voting rights. The initiative, called “Out of Bounds,” targets powerhouse college sports programs in states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Tennessee. According to the organization, those states have pursued congressional redistricting plans that weaken Black political representation following recent court decisions affecting the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
“The state that is working to erase your grandmother’s congressional district is the same state whose governor will stand on the field and celebrate your touchdown or game-winning shot,” Tylik McMillan, national director of the NAACP’s youth and college division, said in a statement. “We are asking young people – recruits, current athletes, fans – to see that connection clearly and to act on it. The Out of Bounds campaign is about redirecting what has always been ours, power and perseverance.”
NAACP president Derrick Johnson argued that Black athletes have become the economic backbone of many elite college football and basketball programs, generating billions through television contracts, ticket sales and merchandising while Black communities simultaneously face political disenfranchisement. Johnson said athletes should not continue enriching institutions connected to states accused of diminishing Black voting power.
“What these states have done is not a policy disagreement. It is a sprint to erase Black political power,” Derrick Johnson, president & CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement. “The NAACP will not watch the same institutions that depend on Black athletic prowess to fill their stadiums and their bank accounts remain silent while their states strip Black communities of their voice.”
The campaign asks prospective athletes and their families to avoid committing to universities in those states, while also encouraging current players to use their public platforms to advocate for fair voting maps. Supporters are also being urged to redirect donations and financial support away from major athletic programs and toward historically Black colleges and universities, or HBCUs.
The boycott effort follows the recent Supreme Court case Louisiana v. Callais, which critics say weakened key protections of the Voting Rights Act and opened the door for Republican-led legislatures to redraw congressional maps in ways that reduce Black representation. Civil rights groups across the South have responded with protests, organizing campaigns and calls for economic pressure.
Prominent Democrats, including Hakeem Jeffries and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, have backed the campaign. The caucus has also threatened to oppose the SCORE Act, a proposed federal law related to college athlete compensation, unless conferences like the SEC and ACC publicly address voting rights concerns. SCORE aims to reign in the “wild wild west” culture of money-making student-athletes that has received major bipartisan pushback.
It will be very interesting to watch how this boycott unfolds. Can students forgo the glamour of elite college sports programs to stand on business for a worthy cause? We shall see…
The post Baller Boycott: NAACP Asks College Athletes To Withhold Talents From Southern PWIs Over Voting Rights appeared first on Bossip.
