Money Versus Morals: The Risk/Reward Factors of Modern Political Advocacy

"The principal would like to see you."

Starting at a young age, you never wanted to hear those seven words. Those seven words came to symbolize discipline, a discipline distributed by the local authority figure. If you were called down to the principal's office, it was more than likely for a negative reason that your own classroom teacher felt was beyond his or her control. A trip to the principal's office meant tough questions, possible tears, and a potential call home to mom or dad. In short, being called down to the office was not something you wanted to happen.

The same is true as a teacher.

As a teacher, you never wanted to be called down to the principal's office for similar reasons: that more than likely there was an issue of concern that needed to be addressed. Whereas the fear of a call home to parents was no longer a chief concern, what was a concern was the outcome of the conversation. Were you going to be questioned about your test scores? About student conflicts? About your classroom management? About your education philosophy and pedagogy? What was so important that your supervisor felt could not wait to discuss after the year had ended?

In May of 2014, I got that fateful call from my principal. I was in my first year of teaching Spanish at a charter high school in eastern San Diego County. It was a highly sought after position, with over 60 candidates applying for the gig. I knew this and I knew how fortunate I was to have landed the position in what I firmly believed could have been a school where I taught for the duration of my professional career. I was building a good rapport with my students, my test scores were right on par with my colleagues despite not having taught the curriculum before, and I had even been recruited by a mentor teacher to work with the AVID program, a program designed to help create college-going opportunities for students coming from low socioeconomic backgrounds. I felt that I was beginning to settle in after nearly a year and that I would be even better with an entire summer to revamp and retool my teaching ahead of the next academic school year. I was very much anticipating a good talk with my principal and one that would give me loads of confidence moving forward.

"Trevor, we won't be renewing your contract next year." 

And just like, with nine simple words, my world was turned upside down. To be honest, I remember very little of the rest of the conversation. My principal said something along the lines of my teaching not being up to par because of me not giving homework. I vaguely recall her saying something that the curriculum wasn't challenging enough. But neither of those things made sense. Sure, I didn't give homework but that was my own educational philosophy based on research. The curriculum I was teaching was set by our department and I was literally teaching the exact same material as my peers who were also teaching first- and second-year Spanish instruction. No, there had to have been something more, something that my principal wasn't telling me. Why would I be singled out for removal when I was doing exactly the same as everyone else?

Then it hit me: my politics.

As someone in his late-20s who was becoming more politically astute, I found myself turning more and more to social media to share my political opinions. During this year, in particular, I was very active on Twitter, becoming more and more critical of what I was seeing as blatant obstruction by the Republican Party to thwart the presidency of Barack Obama. My Twitter bio at the time did not include my place of employment, but I would hear occasional rumors that our administration was monitoring its staff's social media profiles. I knew for a fact that my principal was on the conservative end of the spectrum as she helped create a weekend space on our campus for a local Evangelical group to meet, a decision that rattled many veteran teachers. My principal saw in me someone who was not tenured and someone whose views ran contrary to her own. Despite my being apolitical as a classroom teacher, my online presence was a threat to her and her worldview. Because of her authority, she was able to create a bogus justification for my removal and did so knowing that she could easily replace me with another candidate whose political views more closely aligned with her own.

I share this story because the idea of personal versus professional politics has recently been in the news. Specifically, ESPN has been showing a documentary called The Last Dance, which chronicled the 1997-1998 Chicago Bulls team with Michael Jordan. The documentary goes back and forth in time and Sunday night's 6th episode included a poignant segment on Jordan and his lack of political advocacy. In 1990, Senator Jesse Helms was running for reelection in North Carolina against the African-American Mayor of Charlotte named Harvey Gantt and Jordan, then being the most popular athlete in the country, had a chance to weigh in on the election in his home state. Despite being asked to campaign for Gantt, Jordan declined, famously saying "Republicans buy sneakers, too." Jordan explained that he never wanted to get into the social justice/advocacy world and he just wanted to be a professional athlete. President Barack Obama was interviewed for the documentary and expressed disappointment in how Jordan chose not to get involved and be more politically active. Eventually, Helms would be reelected and Jordan would continue to shy away from controversial issues for the rest of his career.

The truth is, we all make choices based on what is best for us. I was a 30-year-old teacher wanting to be political. Michael Jordan was the world's greatest athlete, wanting to be apolitical. I now work for a nonprofit doing advocacy work and Michael Jordan now is on Forbes' list of richest people, with a net worth of over $2 billion. I don't regret what happened to me and I'm sure Michael Jordan doesn't regret what happened to him. In the United States, there are repercussions for one's public politics but these repercussions vary greatly across the socioeconomic spectrum. A public school teacher not yet tenured has much less wiggle room to be publicly political than a Hollywood actor or actress. A public school teacher could not trash Donald Trump in a public speech whereas someone like Meryl Streep or Robert DeNiro would have no limitations in doing just that. At a time when there is the biggest partisan divide in our politics since the Civil War, there are definitely personal and political risks in publicly sharing your political opinions and those risks may not necessarily outweigh the reward.

Many of us know the story of Colin Kaepernick. After kneeling during the national anthem to raise awareness of social injustice in 2016, Kaepernick has been blackballed from the National Football League. Despite this, he has been able to stay in the public eye and received a multimillion-dollar contract from Nike in 2018, a move that helped increased Nike's stock by 18% over the next year. In December of 2019, Kaepernick's shoe was launched and it sold out within the day. Yet Kaepernick's experience is exactly the opposite of Craig Hodges, a former teammate of Michael Jordan on the Chicago Bulls. Hodges was a strong advocate for social justice, including advocating that the Bulls and the Lakers refuse to play Game 1 of the NBA Finals in 1991 after the Rodney King verdict as a showing of solidarity. Three months later, Hodges was invited to the White House with his teammates where he wore a dashiki and asked then-president George H.W. Bush to read an eight-page letter he wrote asking his administration to do more for Black communities. For his open advocacy work, Hodges' contract was not renewed by the Bulls and despite being a two-time NBA champion, he soon found himself out of the league, blackballed by all of the owners.

The truth is that each situation described came down to the individual being presented with a question: silence versus action. It's a time-honored question that people in America have been dealing with for 400 years. When should they speak out and when should they stay silent? Is it worth making a fuss over an injustice? What will be the repercussions if I go at this alone? Are there others willing to go in with me? Will my boss support me or be the one gunning to get me fired? Can my family live without my salary? Will I be blackballed in my profession? If I don't step up, will anybody else? Is this issue even worth fighting for?

I would be remiss to say that I hardly considered any of these factors when I was let go of my position. I didn't see myself as a political activist at the time. In fact, I was being more selfish than anything. I lived alone at the time, didn't have a family to support, and had already been through two separate jobs over the previous 4 years so I had experience in transitioning from job to job. I also had savings, a key factor in being able to travel and pursue work while being temporarily out of work. Had I been married with a family to help support, I would have been much more careful with my political musings on social media. I would have simply put my head down for those first three years and avoided ruffling any feathers before getting tenure and then, and only then, would I have opened up about my politics, and even then, it would have been limited. At the end of the day, I would have been much more submissive and would not have become the person that I am today.

It's easy to look around and ask that certain individuals with influence be more politically active. But the truth is, this is an individual decision that each person must make. For the first decade of his career, NBA great LeBron James received constant criticism for not being more politically active. Yet, behind the scenes, James was doing some amazing things for his Akron community, including creating a charter high school where he provided all seniors with free tuition to attend Kent State College for the graduating class of 2020. In 2016, James endorsed Hillary Clinton and in February of 2018 he earned the ire of Fox News' Laura Ingraham when she told James to "shut up and dribble" rather than be critical of Donald Trump's presidency. James took this quote and ran with it by producing a three-episode series on HBO in the fall titled Shut Up And Dribble which looked at the intersection of sports and activism and even included a section on former Chicago Bull Craig Hodges by introducing his advocacy to a new generation of Americans.

Activism itself is a form of privilege. Being able to be open about one's political views in a public setting is not a luxury many of us have. We work in mixed company and despite our best intentions, it is often difficult to separate our personal selves from our professional selves. At the end of the day, it is up to each person how he or she chooses to use their professional position to balance with their own personal politics. The answer isn't the same for everyone nor are any two situations exactly alike. It's easy to criticize Michael Jordan from a distance for not being more politically engaged but at the same time, his ascent to stardom opened the way for someone like LeBron James, who now is both a superstar and politically active. Had Jordan not built his multibillion-dollar empire, James himself might never have been able to follow in his footsteps. James took his risk because he knew that the political climate in 2018 was a lot more favorable for someone like him to become political than it was for Jordan to do so in the year 1990. The world has changed a lot in 30 years and people now know the risks and rewards for becoming political in the public eye.

And they now know it is not a decision to take lightly.