ESPN’s The Last Dance has highlighted the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls in a ten-episode series. Before the series was released, Bulls’ Legend Michael Jordan feared that people would not like how he was going to be perceived in the series, and last night’s episodes may be a reason for that belief.
For the majority of his career, Jordan tried to not let his political beliefs be evident, unlike athletes such as Muhamed Ali who was compared to Jordan in the first of two episodes that aired last night. This political views were evident with the 1990 Senate election in Jordan’s home state of North Carolina.
In that election, Harvey Gantt, who was both a Democrat and African-American, challenged incumbent Republican Jesse Helms, who had a reputation of being racist. Jordan’s mother asked her son to do a PSA supporting Gantt. Jordan subsequently responded by saying, “Republicans buy sneakers too.”
This comment, as expected, received some backlash as many people felt that Jordan was strictly worrying about his bottom line and felt that he was being selfish.
Former President Barack Obama voiced his feelings about the comment. “I’ll be honest, when it was reported that Michael said, ‘Republicans buy sneakers, too’ – for somebody who was at that time preparing for a career in civil rights law and knowing what Jesse Helms stood for, you would’ve wanted to see Michael push harder on that,” Obama said.
Jordan doubled down on this comment saying that it was made off the cuff, on the team bus with teammates Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant present. “The way I go about my life is I set examples. If it inspires you? Great, I will continue to do that,” Jordan said. “If it doesn’t? Then maybe I’m not the person you should be following.”
Jordan’s “Republicans buy sneakers too” quote is one of the most famous of his career, and he has tried his hardest to repair the damage done by that quote. He donated money to Gantt’s campaign in 1990 and has become more of a political advocate as he has gotten older, donating money to the NAACP amid the Black Lives Matter movement in 2016, and donating money to various political campaigns, while inadvertently pathing the way for the athletes of today to have a voice on political issues.
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