PGA Tour's Champ Discusses Showing Support For Racial Injustice

After posting a BMW opening 77, Cameron Champ still spoke to press about his show of support for protestors and other professional athletes choosing to not contest official games and matches. From Adam Schupak’s report in Chicago:

The PGA Tour posted a video on social media on Wednesday that Champ re-tweeted, in which he wore a Nike golf shoe that is black on his left foot and white on his right foot, the latter with the words “Jacob Blake” and “BLM” in blue marker. During Thursday’s round he shook up his message.

“I have Papa Champ on my sneakers, Black Lives Matter and Breonna Taylor,” he said. “Obviously there are some very important reasons why that’s on my shoes. For my grandfather, if anyone knows my story, he grew up in the South, Jim Crow, all those eras through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s and obviously Breonna Taylor, which is another ongoing issue. For me again that’s kind of where I stand with this. I just want to show my love and support and obviously with my hat, as well.”

Champ’s full remarks here were also of note:

Q. Just to build on that, with the NBA it looks a lot different than the PGA TOUR. I just wonder, there's probably a number of players, certainly fans who have a different idea of what Black Lives Matter means. I just wonder if you feel in any way like an outlier when you support this or you wear the shoes and you're the only one here, right? Just how you kind of square that and how you feel about that.

CAMERON CHAMP: Yeah, I mean, it's -- again, I mean, I do to a sense. Like I said, it's a situation where, again, that video I did yesterday, and I've been told what some people have said. I'm like, that's just -- if you don't understand the full view of everything and realize what's going on and realize the statistics with massive incarceration to law and order to war on drugs to statistically speaking there's, what, I think 12 percent of the U.S.'s population is African-American which makes up 33 percent of the incarcerations versus 62 or 63 percent Caucasian and it makes up 30 percent. So how do those numbers add up?

So it's just, again, a topic that again, I'm going to always show my support. Again, it's part of me, it's part of my family, again, with my grandfather who I looked up to more than anyone, and he's the one who I've learned all the knowledge from and kind of fed off, and again, I think it's a good thing we're all talking about it, because again, it's what needs to happen for change to happen.