Kyrie Irving recently called racism “the dumbest thing ever.”
In a recent stream, Irving spoke about how he feels about racism in the context of his experiences. “Growing up in this society, just because you have this different skin tone, you have different rules to abide by — or you can’t be proud of your history because of skin tone, because people really got killed because of [it],” he began. “Do you realize how stupid that is? You know how ignorant you've gotta be to put somebody in a tree and hang them because they're black? That’s probably the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard to be honest with you.”
“You can judge me when I’m on a basketball court and say nasty things,” Irving continued. “People have always said nasty things to me before. You don’t even fucking know who I am. I stand up for humanity for being a coexisting community where race, culture, class, and religion are not always at the forefront of everything we do.”
Irving has spoken up about his feelings about racism in the past. Back in February, Irving posted a series of images on Instagram that expressed how he felt about it — such as the quote "the rights of a human being should be above any law” and a 1971 Black Panther newspaper cover.
Back in 2021, Irving also touched on not wanting to experience any racism when playing in Boston.
“It’s unfortunate that sports has come to a lot of this kind of crossroads where you’re seeing a lot of old ways come up,” Irving said. “It’s been that way in history in terms of entertainment and performers and sports for a long period of time, and just underlying racism and just treating people like they’re in a human zoo, throwing stuff at people, saying things. There’s a certain point where it gets to be too much, so I called it out.”
“I just wanted to keep it strictly basketball and then you just see that people feel very entitled out here,” he continued. “They pay for the tickets, great. I’m grateful that they’re coming in to watch a great performance but we’re not at the theater, we’re not throwing tomatoes and other random stuff at the people that are performing. It’s too much and it’s a reflection on us as a whole, when you have fans acting like that. Hopefully people learn their lessons from being banned, for however many years of being arrested but there’s always going to be an occasion.”