His father comes from Nigeria, his mother is German: How 20-year-old professional basketball player Joshua Obiesie learned about everyday racism from s.Oliver Würzburg.
Is it really just this photo? In black and white. It looks so different from all the many photos and posts that you can currently see from all the demonstrations around the globe. And that’s why it’s so remarkable. Königsplatz, Munich. Saturday, June 6: Joshua Obiesie apparently stands on a ledge or on stacked beer crates or something similar. At least not on the shoulders of the friends he is with. And he stands above his fellow demonstrators. And therefore also maintains the hygienic distance. He has a mask on. Corona! And holds up a cardboard box. It says: “#BLM” and “Black lives matter”.
Obiesie, professional basketball player in the service of Bundesliga club s.Oliver Würzburg, is just one of 25,000 people demonstrating against racism and police violence in Munich, his home town, at this moment. Obiesie, dark curly hair, black eyes, not a black, rather slightly chocolate complexion, says: “These demonstrations are very important and they mean a lot to me. Racism is everywhere. The whole world is affected. And now a signal is being given. Finally. Worldwide. ” Joshua Obiesie has experienced racism firsthand.
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These demonstrations were sparked by the death of George Floyd, who, after trying to pay with a fake $ 20 bill, was killed by a white cop when he was arrested in Minneapolis in late May because he was eight minutes and 46 seconds long Knees pressed back. And these protests were fueled not only in the United States last weekend because a black man was killed in the back by a white policeman in the back with two shots – he had resisted his arrest.
The black-and-white photo that Obiesie published on the Internet is a little reminiscent of pictures that you know from Martin Luther King – which I hope you don’t even have to explain in the sports world anymore. Not only because it is black and white and therefore a big contradiction to all the colorful and excited things that are now usually spread senselessly to #BLM in the virtual world. It says a lot. Even about a young person. And about his concern.
If you talk to Obiesie about this photo and about his participation in the demo, the protests in general and his personal experiences a few days later, you can feel during the phone call that a young person is deeply affected. Not only because of television pictures, news from the Internet or calls from the USA.
But from personal experience.
Even if he says that he only had to learn “little things” about the current situation – Joshua Obiesie knows racism from his own experience. You have to know: Obiesie is just under two meters tall, likes to wear hoodies (i.e. hoodies) as well as jogging pants – basketball-like – and also dresses like a person of his age group, including sneakers. “I drove home on the subway at 12 a.m. after a training session in Munich, and people with a companion went to another bank and said loudly: ‘He’s black!’ Others changed sides when he walked the rest of the way home.
“When we bleed, we all bleed the same color …”
Joshua Obiesie, basketball player at s.Oliver Würzburg–
Everyday racism. Obiesie, whose father comes from Nigeria and left the family early after his birth, and whose mother is German and who has also scored in a game in the German national team, says that he sometimes came home from school as a child and I cried – because children can also be cruel and the insults are bad. His mother tried to clarify. “It helped me a lot to understand and learn all of this,” says Obiesie.
In the course of the conversation one can begin to guess: in this case he knows exactly what he is talking about. And what’s close to his heart. Then Joshua Obiesie says another sentence, which is not really new – but which is surprising, can be heard from such a young mouth: “When we bleed, we all bleed the same color …”
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