At The Athletic, Ken Rosenthal organized a panel discussion involving a handful of retired black MLB players.

Included were Phillies Ryan Howard and Jimmmmmmmmy Rollllllllins, who shared their thoughts on George Floyd and racial inequality in America.

A couple of snippets from the piece, which is unlocked (no paywall):

Rollins:

In our community, we fear ourselves anyway. It’s not like only whites and others are taught to fear us. We’re taught to fear us. You’ve got to watch out for this cat, you know what I’m saying. One of my homeboys growing up, his dad was a police officer. Big William. I remember growing up, my perception of him was, Why do you want to be a police officer? You know all the people in the neighborhood. You’re going to be the one arresting ’em. You know who to go get. Why are you going to go snitch? That was the mentality.

But racism isn’t just black versus others, Mexicans versus others, whites versus everybody. It’s systematic. If we don’t break the chain ourselves, how can we expect others to do so first? Although they may be the ones who, in our eyes, perpetuate it in movies, and the way we’re perceived on TV, all the bad stories. If we change one person and start that line, that will help. But if we’re not willing, after this is over, to go back and culturally make a change, it’s just going to repeat itself. If you look at the track record, it’s going to continue to happen.

Howard:

It goes back to the whole white privilege thing, to where they cannot understand what it’s like to have to be in that situation. I actually had a situation in Philadelphia back in ’07, ’08. We had just gotten home from a road trip. It was like 3 or 4 in the morning. We’re leaving the park. I live downtown. I’m in my Escalade. I’ve got the big rims on it, 26-inch rims, windows tinted.

Everybody knows what the police-car lights look like. I’m like, “OK, let me act right because this cop is right behind me. I’m going to try and let this dude pass. We pull up to the same light. He pulls up next to me. I’m going left. He’s going right. The light turns green, boom, my signal is on, I’m doing everything proper. I make my left turn. He sits there at the light. Two seconds later, boom, he makes the left and follows me. Pulls me over and asks for a license, registration, the whole nine yards.

I said, “Officer, can you tell me what I was doing?” He said, “Well, I ran your plates and nothing came back.” I was like, “Isn’t that a good thing? I didn’t speed, didn’t run any lights. I wasn’t doing anything crazy, but you felt the need to pull me over.” Then another police officer pulled up, a black police officer. He went over to the dude and said, “You know who that is?” He came over and talked to me, the dude wound up leaving.

I said, “Look, man, if I’m breaking a law, I don’t care who I am, what I do, that don’t matter. If I’m running a light or not signaling and you pull me over, that’s fine. But when he tells me he pulled me over because he ran my tag and nothing came back what am I supposed to do?” The black officer said, “Yeah, that dude has done that a few times.” He ended up getting reprimanded by his superiors. But when you have people like that working in that capacity, what can you do?

It’s a good read, worth your time.

Here’s the full link again: A conversation: Retired African American MLB players on race, baseball, America