The Complexity of Revolution

Reflections from a Rebellious Soccer Coach

-by Mutanda Kwesele

“The hard cold facts today indicate that the hope of the people of color in the world may well rest upon the American Negro and his ability to reform the structure of racist imperialism from within and thereby turn the technology and wealth of the West to the task of liberating the world from want.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Where Do We Go From Here

This is a call to arms, a cry from the deepest bowels of the country where the Silenced reside. In the United States of America, as with any place where injustice is foundational and systemic, there are — very broadly speaking — at least three groups of people. Let’s call the first group the Chosen, the powerful cohort who have the privilege to interpret the world solely through the lens of advancing their own narrow vision of utopia. Directly below them in the pecking order are the Comfortable, people who actually hold the key to uprooting the system because the entire machine relies on their loyalty to — and aspirations to join the ranks of — the Chosen. Finally, there are the Silenced, the expendable people whose bodies provide the fuel — both figuratively and literally — for the empire to thrive and churn out more profits for the Chosen and the Comfortable. Amongst other things, the legacy of the black experience in America, beginning with how economics fueled and shaped the trade of enslaved Africans, has resulted in the vast majority of the Chosen and the Comfortable being lighter skinned people of European ancestry.

The Silenced are multicultural in every sense but there is a special designation for those of African descent due in large part to how the forces of anti-blackness and white-supremacy have interacted throughout our odyssey here. It must also be noted that lighter skinned, very poor people of European descent are numerous in the United States but their membership as part of the Silenced has often been ignored due to the insistence (driven in part by themselves) that their light skin and their ancestry puts them above any Black person. For example, this is exactly how the wealthy planter class, who owned just about all of the enslaved Africans in the antebellum south, could get poor white farmers — who didn’t have a pot to piss in — to fight in the Civil War on the side of the Confederacy. For all the talk, both then and now, of the importance of economics to political behaviors, money was not the reason that the light-skinned members of the Silenced (the poor, landless whites) took to the battle fields in order to maintain a system that was to their economic disadvantage. They fought for the South because the Confederacy fed their sense of supremacy, it reinforced the idea in their minds that it didn’t matter how impoverished or powerless they were, at least they were not black. Skin color, especially any traces or affinities to blackness, has been the catalyst for the death and destruction of so many in a country ostensibly founded on the idea of justice for all.

The concept of society essentially being a product of a struggle between the Chosen, the Comfortable, and the Silenced is not merely a simplistic definition of historical complexity. It is a matter of objective record. As I will show later, it applies as much to the soccer landscape in our country as it does to the state of our social institutions, including our schools, that for too long have operated to exacerbate the oppression of the Silenced. Additionally, what we must all reckon with is the reality that what especially inflames the hatred of the Chosen towards the Silenced is not the latter’s pathology, not crime, not apathy, or even laziness. On the contrary, what really gets the blood of the Chosen and the Comfortable going is the advancement and the positive agency of the Silenced. It is their progress, their steadfast march towards what is rightfully theirs by birth — the presence of their innate dignity and worth — that has historically produced the greatest backlash from the Chosen and the Comfortable. Objectively, this vitriol, white resentment, and outright terrorism, can be seen throughout many episodes in American history. Consider the incredible images of the young Black students walking into Little Rock Central High School in 1957 — to get an education — while being met with angry mobs of the Chosen who viewed blackness as something to permanently keep away. This is what has happened in this country, and it continues to this day in various forms.

(My brother, Mumbi, kneeling in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick in 2017)

Following yet another police display of grotesque disregard for the humanity of dark-skinned people, the murder of George Floyd resulted in millions upon millions of people around the world taking to the streets to scream for their plight to be heard and their condition addressed. As these grievances are laid bare in the streets, it is important to note that between the Chosen, the Comfortable, and the Silenced, there is some mobility — even though its much less than people are commonly led to believe — and of course there are some shared experiences. Undoubtedly, there are people of color who have made enough money to be Comfortable and even push into the Chosen club. However, American tradition dictates that in order to keep the established racial order, it is vital to punish and discredit anyone — regardless of their perceived status — who advocates too loudly for the Silenced, especially if those who are speaking truth to power also have black skin. Furthermore, recognizing the differences between the groups is key to understanding what shapes the conversation around issues of social justice, especially when it comes to the concepts of institutional racism, anti-blackness, white supremacy, imperialism, capitalism, education, health-care, police violence, and even professional as well as youth sports.

At the time of the nation’s founding, entry into the Chosen club required one to be European, Christian, propertied, and male. These were the prerequisites for living the true fulfillment of the American dream. Indigenous people were systematically removed to create space and then all that new arrivals could hope for was to someday gain access to more while being grateful with whatever small slice of the pie they enjoyed at the time. In this climate, enslaved Africans were brought specifically to provide the labor and the capital for this grand experiment in “democracy”. They were brought to do the agricultural work in the southern states and the textile work in the North. Black people were brought to make the Chosen cohort rich and powerful, while the former’s lowly status simultaneously defined and encouraged the formation and desires of the Comfortable. American history is not a pretty story for the Silenced, as can be seen by the condition of the native people of this land. It is not so much a tale of redemption, and certainly not one of justice, but rather one of deep sorrow and remarkable resistance.

What we saw in the streets immediately following the killing of George Floyd wasn’t principally about some abstract sense of “unity”. That is one of the favorite words that the Chosen and the Comfortable like to pour over righteous flames whenever things get too hot. What we have seen across the country, and even around the globe, are primarily expressions of pain and anger from generational wounds that are hundreds of years deep. We are witnessing people, from diverse backgrounds to be sure, say collectively that we must reimagine the American dream to include basic accountability for those who routinely ignore the humanity of black and brown people. This is not an extremely difficult demand to comprehend, unless you are absolutely committed to erasing the ability for the Silenced to ever advocate for anything. Indeed some people are just fine with that state of affairs, and to the extent that they see a problem with our society, in their eyes it is predominantly the black and brown poor who must shoulder most of the blame for a failure to comply. This is the America in which, as a coach, I educate young people through the game of soccer. This is the environment my young son has been born into and these are issues we all have to confront — if we say we care about social change and justice — because they cut to the core of what the nation, and the world, will look like in a future that seems increasingly uncertain and unforgiving.

As a soccer coach, I believe that the game is a microcosm of life and the ultimate gift is that it develops character if we explore it courageously. In a youth team setting, our challenge isn’t just learning how to train and win; it’s to bring together separate individuals to forge a unified identity, to build community. In a recent coaching webinar I was reminded that when we reflect on our why, our reason for coaching, what we are really determining is for whom we coach. Who do we serve? When I founded an organization called The Rising Point in Seattle, Washington in November of 2016, my purpose was to make the game more accessible to kids from low-income families and to provide a special learning experience in order to foster transformational change. On the website — which is down at the moment for reasons I’ll explain soon — this all became expressed simply in our mission statement as a desire to “develop quality people and build community”. Certainly, I can say wholeheartedly that I carry that idea of coaching with me wherever I go but I also know that I have a double mission because of the complexities of the American condition. Our social reality, in which there exists such a wide gap between rich and poor, is the result, amongst other things, of a stubborn refusal to give up the debilitating crutch of anti-blackness in addition to a dangerous aversion to reckon with the violent insecurities and ramifications of white supremacist logic.

Go to any youth soccer tournament just about anywhere in the country and you will see what the high cost of playing this sport has produced. Soaring fees for “elite” clubs and “premier” tournaments have drastically narrowed down the demographics of families who have access to quality opportunities for advancement within the game. In a very real sense, the soccer experience for (mostly) poor, non-white players — and coaches — far too often mirrors the experience of the Silenced in the larger society. I’ve experienced this struggle firsthand most recently as the head coach of the boys’ soccer program at Rainier Beach High School in the Seattle Public School system during the 2018 and 2019 seasons. Like many other large metropolitan areas, the city of Seattle would like to think of itself as a symbol of racial progress and peace. It is proudly Democratic politically and there is a very real sense amongst the Chosen and the Comfortable in the region that everything can be solved with diversity training and a greater sense of inclusion and “unity”. But what isn’t challenged as forcefully or effectively as it should be is the reality of the growing disparities between the wealth and resources of the affluent parts of the city compared to the neighborhoods where the Silenced reside.

(The Rising Point — Summer Camp at Rising Star Elementary in Seattle, 2018)

The legacies of residential segregation, employment discrimination, inadequate funding for public schools, white flight, and gentrification — to name a few — smack you right in the face when you set foot into the halls of Rainier Beach High School. Looking at a breakdown from U.S. News and World Report from the 2018 school year, 97% of the school’s student body are considered to be from an ethnic minority (non-white) and a staggering 78% officially qualify as economically disadvantaged. The school is a testament to what concentrated poverty and inequity look like in action. Diving a little deeper into the statistics, it’s worth mentioning that black people make up about 7% of the total population in the greater Seattle area. At Rainier Beach High School, Black students make up more than 50% of the population. Asian and Latinx students are the next prominent at the school with about 26% and 14% respectively while White pupils account for a whopping 3% of the total. Native Americans and Pacific Islanders combine for roughly 2% and then 5% of kids identify as 2 or more “races”. These figures are not an accident.

The team I coached at Rainier Beach, both years I was there, was almost exclusively comprised of Black kids from different parts of the diaspora, most notably from newly arrived families from northeastern African countries. We also had a handful of Latino players, including a pair of brothers of African descent who grew up in Honduras and speak Spanish. For just about all of our players, English is a second (or even 3rd) language. Several of our kids have younger siblings they were responsible for at home, parents who didn’t have the time to make it to games due to work schedules, and all of them qualified for free and reduced lunch. This was our squad and honestly, even though we faced many challenges and didn’t win as much as we would have liked, it was an incredible privilege and joy to coach them and attempt to craft a positive group identity within the game. But my heart breaks when I consider that for many of them, due to the ridiculous price of youth soccer and the lack of accessibility to clubs in predominantly white spaces, the only time they could afford to play the sport they love so much was during the three months in Spring when they could actually compete and be in an environment where they received support and coaching.

(The 2019 Rainier Beach High School Boys’ Soccer Team)

I mention all this because there are some very real consequences for how we view ourselves as a nation — and how we understand and analyze the current movements in the streets — when you consider what we force the children of the Silenced to endure in order for us to maintain the peace of the status quo. The fact is that we cannot effectively groom young people for a life of empowerment and equitable opportunity if our policies and institutions essentially quarantine them in environments where they are literally confined to learn, play, and live off scraps. There is no winning in this scenario for them, there is only resistance and pain. The resistance takes many forms, from children refusing to be pacified by their mediocre education to people ignoring any sense of decorum or civility in order to forcefully take their own slice of the proverbial pie. And of course the pain is there for all to see, no matter how much the Chosen and the Comfortable among us want to deny its righteous existence. There is pain for the memory of how Tamir Rice and Breonna Taylor were stolen from this world. The suffering was evident in the outcry in Ferguson, Missouri following the death of Mike Brown, and it has been on full display in the current waves of protest around the world after the murder of George Floyd. In Mr. Floyd’s case, the fact that it was someone’s knee on his neck that killed him is not an insignificant coincidence; it is hauntingly symbolic and descriptive of the lived experience of the Silenced.

In the summer of 2019, while I was in Ohio conducting a Rising Point soccer camp at Elyria Catholic High School outside of Cleveland, I was offered the opportunity to take a coaching position in the Academy of the Columbus Crew SC of Major League Soccer. I was excited for the chance to work at the highest level of the youth game in the country and to learn from top coaches in a professional environment that would compensate me much better for all the time and effort that I put into my craft. The benefits were abundantly clear, especially for someone who is more than a little obsessed with the beautiful game. I envisioned myself growing as a person, being exposed to new ideas and a higher speed of play, and potentially getting the opportunity for more coaching education. But with all the things that I hoped to gain, there were also things I knew that I would have to give up, at least for a little while.

First and foremost, for my family — my wife and baby boy — I knew it would be difficult to move to central Ohio and be away from family and friends in the Seattle area. Additionally, my wife Jacqueline — who has been an integral part of the formation and mission of The Rising Point — would have to stop teaching in a classroom for a little bit in order to be home with our young son. Along with what my family would be sacrificing to allow me to pursue another level in my profession, I knew that there was something else that I was leaving behind, something near and dear to my heart. The Rising Point organization, including the upkeep of the website — where I published my writing — and our signature program of Soccer in Schools, had to be put on hold. I said goodbye to the kids I had just begun to work with at Emerald City FC, and I had to leave my position as coach of the Rainier Beach boys. The after-school soccer program I ran at Van Asselt Elementary (now Rising Star Elementary) was ended along with the morning futsal sessions at Orca K-8 School where my wife used to teach.

I was leaving some of the most vulnerable kids in the Seattle area (and in our society), the Silenced, to go and work predominantly for the Chosen in a corporate club. Make no mistake about it, I love what I currently do, and we have an awesome staff of talented people doing some really great things in Columbus. But I also recognize that there is much more that I need to do in order to truly fulfill my mission as an educator. I’m aware that amidst all the complexities, the simple fact is that a true revolution requires substantive change to occur so that the Silenced can have access to the same resources that the Comfortable covet and the Chosen horde for themselves. This change requires good people to be resilient disturbers of the “peace”. It requires those who have the ability to choose between comfort and resistance to intentionally choose the latter. That, or else it can only happen with an uprising from the Silenced by any means necessary.

(The Rising Point — Soccer in Schools program at Rising Star Elementary School in Seattle, 2019)

Personally, I have always tried to make sure that I am on the correct side of the battle and these days have certainly provided a number of crucial topics for reflection. Subsequently, this is my confession and my aspiration; I coach for liberation regardless of where I am and, to the degree that coaching for social justice is rebellious, I aspire to constantly be a rebellious educator. I coach in order to develop quality people and build community, which means that I coach for transformational change. That being said, I recognize that when I’m working with the children of the Chosen and the Comfortable, my job is to help them liberate themselves from believing the dangerous notion that the world revolves around them. If they are to be the gatekeepers standing between others and prosperity, then I want them to be as aware, as intentional, and as responsible as the game requires players to be in order to help the team shine. I want them to understand what true solidarity entails and I want them to take ownership of the idea that they have a role to play in helping their fellow countrymen create a better society because we are all inextricably linked.

(The Rising Point — Summer Camp at Rising Star Elementary School in Seattle, 2018)

In my classroom, the field, I do not divorce my players’ perception — their awareness — from their actions with and without the ball. Similarly, we cannot divorce the game itself from the larger society within which we play. Everything is interrelated and it begins with the idea that we play to find air, we play to breathe, we play to discover the best possible version of ourselves. The way in which we view our history (and our world) prejudices the way in which we teach it and, ultimately, the way in which our children learn how to be in the world. If, in a soccer sense, I am now in the position of a gatekeeper of sorts because I coach in an MLS Academy, then I view an important part of my role to be shifting the paradigm for how kids experience the game. Additionally, while we teach kids to see their lives differently, I believe that we are also charged with opening the possibilities for more children of the Silenced to gain access to the highest levels of youth soccer in the country. From our privileged position, we must recognize that a true revolution requires that this work be done both from the elevated platforms of the Chosen and the Comfortable as well as the crumbling asphalt where the Silenced often play.

(The u14 Columbus Crew SC Academy team from the 2019–2020 season)

To properly reimagine what America could be, it is vital that we open up pathways for all kids, not just for the Comfortable and the Chosen, to learn and grow through sport. When it comes to the children of the Silenced, the most important thing I learned during the last couple of years as the Founder and Director of The Rising Point — and especially as the head coach of the Rainier Beach Boys’ team — is the importance of showing up consistently, of being present. That’s why it breaks my heart that I had to leave, even though I fully expect to be back in the future to continue to build The Rising Point. I recognize that no matter what we do as it pertains to the children of the Chosen and the Comfortable, the real challenge and the true barometer of transformational change is what we do to improve the conditions — and amplify the voices — of the Silenced. Truthfully, this task requires more than just rebellious individuals, it requires sustained and powerful movements to persistently demand and work for change. It requires a different model to be presented and this is ultimately what the long-term vision of The Rising Point is, to provide a different soccer structure all together for the participation of young people interested in the beautiful game.

The revolution, both in youth soccer and society at large, requires allies for the Silenced. These can come from either the Chosen or the Comfortable group, but they are crucial to success. Understand too, that what determines one’s group status isn’t necessarily always as clear cut as the color of one’s skin or how much money the family has. In addition to the resources available to you, what determines one’s group is the mindset, the purpose, and the accountability with which you move through the world and interact with others. Thus, I consider myself to be among the Silenced — especially when seen through the prism of ethnicity and skin color — and at the same time I am aware that I am able to profit from certain opportunities that are more indicative of the Comfortable. I believe that this crucial reflection, this awareness, allows me to better speak truth to power when I’m with the Chosen and the Comfortable. Hopefully, it also gives me a certain credibility with the Silenced who, understandably, loathe insincerity more than just about anything. This is my hope and prayer as someone who desperately wants to see real change in this country.

(Image from The Rising Point film — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWhuZDacRi8&t=1s)

I want to see change for my young son and for all the children of the Silenced. Long overdue are the days when the twin towers of institutionalized white-supremacy and anti-blackness can come crashing down so that we might turn our collective energy to fixing the inequalities in our society rather than routinely mourning for another life snatched away by police violence. We have become far too comfortable with seeing lifeless black bodies, far too skilled at recognizing humanity when the human is no longer breathing. Therefore, we ought to make a conscious choice to edify the living; to appreciate and honor the wonder that is right before us. I understand and empathize with those who feel, with more than a little justification, that we can’t eulogize the dead enough. Certainly, we do need to say their names because “they” are all of us. We produced them and as such we must all in our own way take some responsibility for their deaths if only because we haven’t yet dealt with the apparatus that took their lives. And so we should certainly move with their names forever on our minds, in our hearts, and on our lips so we can stride forward in their memory.

I stand in solidarity with the Silenced and I use the game of soccer to rebel against the status quo. Even though I’m hopeful that things can change, I do not want to get complacent in the belief that it is enough to cry out and march only when the world is watching, or when it seems the hip thing to do. The challenge is to couple that incredible energy — the bodies striding for justice in the streets — with meaningful legislative action, including voting and lobbying for local initiatives, when seemingly nobody is watching. It means investing in organizations and people who have committed their lives to improving the conditions of others, especially the most vulnerable among us. It means reshaping the country and the world that we want to live in through policies and, if need be, liberating ourselves from institutions and practices that no longer serve the will of the people and have no place in a renewed and more just version of the United States. For our children and for a better world, we must continue to reach higher.

-Mutanda Kwesele

(The Rising Point — Summer Camp at Elyria Catholic High School in Ohio, 2019)