Christopher Lara

Writing Humanities

Recently throughout the sports organizations there have been situations in which athletes have been censored whenever they attempted to use their platform to speak out and address issues going on in today’s world. Situations like that of Kaepernick who used the NFL platform to kneel during the national anthem as a way of protesting against the brutality and discrimination suffered by minorities, he ended up getting fired and has yet to be re offered a contract back into the NFL. Also, the incident in which a white reporter by the name of Laura Ingraham demanded Lebron James to “Shut up and dribble”, a statement she said as a way to let the people know that she does not care nor wants to hear the political opinion or advice from someone who gets paid millions of dollars to dribble a ball.

My subway ad consists of Lebron James handcuffed to a spinning basketball, his mouth is taped shut, and his jersey reads “PRISONER #23”. As short as it may seem, that is how I wanted to complete my work, I did not want to bore my audience with a hundred or more words but have them think and notice the symbolism I portrayed in my piece. I wanted to use the handcuffs as a way of showing that America is not allowing him to do anything else but play basketball, it is as if they have him held prisoner to the sports organization. This leads to his jersey, I decided to put a twist to Lebron James’ iconic number so that instead of just the number 23 it reads “PRISONER # 23”, I did this to add on to the idea of him being being imprisoned to the sports organization. My last symbolic part in this ad was the mouth which was taped shut, I did this because it is what he is being told to do, to “SHUT UP and dribble”. The technique of symbolism was one I really worked hard on in order to have the audience stop and think, normally when people see a bunch of text they get bored and would not even bother reading, but when you add an uncommon image to a small piece of text their mind will begin to think. Just like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. I created this piece to show that behind a man who earns millions of dollars there is a man who speaks out for minorities, America pays no mind to issues surrounding minorities and when athletes attempt to say something about it they are put down as well.

I want the audience to support the athletes who represent the minorities because when we can not speak up for ourselves, they are there to speak for us. However, if America continues to censor our athletes then we are all left voiceless, and a demonizing America wins.