NBA's Brogdon: “Mainstream media has to refocus their energy not on the oppressed ... but on the oppressors”
Malcolm Brogdon: “I think once we focus on the system, the system is broken. It's a system based on systematic racism.”
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From the June 3, 2020, edition of CNN Newsroom with Poppy Harlow and Jim Sciutto
JIM SCIUTTO (CNN ANCHOR): You, in your comments we just played there and elsewhere, you have called for peaceful protests. What do looting, other acts of violence, again by a minority of those showing up on the streets, what does that do to the broader message to you? Are you concerned about that?
MALCOLM BROGDON (INDIANA PACERS GUARD): You know, honestly, I don't want to focus on it. I think that America, I think that mainstream media has to refocus their energy not on the oppressed, not on the results of a broken system, but on the oppressors. On the people that are really initiating these acts. I think once we focus on the system, the system is broken. It's a system based on systematic racism, on keeping a specific population of people down. Once we focus on the system, we start to see the inconsistencies in it. We start to see that Black men are policed and incarcerated at a rate five times as high as -- higher than white people. We start to see that Black people make up 12% of the population, but we are 32% of the prison population. These are the things that have to change. These are the things that once you look at the discrepancies, they are standing right, they're standing right at you.