When I used to work at Barnes & Noble, I had a black coworker in the cafe. He was one of the nicest guys in the entire store. Hardworking. Reserved. He had that gentle giant persona (he was 6’3”, 250lb).
One day, I was working in my department when I heard some commotion over in the cafe. I looked over, and he had unexpectedly thrown a drink in someone’s face. The store manager took my coworker into the receiving area to calm down and let him leave through the back door to avoid any further confrontation. That was the last time I worked with him, as he was fired immediately.
Turns out the customer had called him the n-word, and he lashed out the only way he could think of in the moment.
Did he deserve to be fired for it? Rules are rules, so I can’t argue on that front.
Did the guy deserve to have a drink thrown in his face? Absofuckinglutely.
There lies the conundrum that Steelers wide receiver DK Metcalf finds himself in this week, albeit on a much larger stage.
The league suspended him two games for an altercation with a fan in the stands during the Steelers’ 29-24 win against the Lions this past Sunday. Whether or not it landed, DK definitely threw a punch and was intended to hit the fan. As a black man, I knew there was only one reason why any athlete would do something so brazen in the middle of a game. This was confirmed when someone from DK’s camp told the media that there was a history with this fan.
DK had reportedly complained about this same fan during his time in Seattle, saying the fan called his mother a derogatory term and called DK something “you never call a Black man.” We can imagine the myriad iterations of different words that could have been used in this instance.
To the surprise of no one, the fan has denied saying any of this, claiming that DK was upset that the fan called him by his government name instead of DK. We all know that’s bullshit, but it’s honestly besides the point.
As a black athlete, or any level of celebrity, really, you have to endure things that others don’t. You have to let people hurl all sorts of insults at you that would make any other person cry. You have to take it all on the chin. You have to take the high road. You just have to deal with it. If you retaliate in any way, you’re all of a sudden the villain.
Make no mistake, DK definitely should not have punched that fan. But he also should not have been put in a situation where he had to endure that. No person should. Yet it’s something that’s asked of Black celebrities every second of every day. Fall in line. Don’t upset anyone. Don’t feed into the angry Black man/woman stereotype even in the face of absolute vitriol. It’s a gargantuan ask that not all can easily accept.
Unfortunately for DK, he’s figured out the hard way what happens when you choose not to fall in line. Not only has he lost $555k in salary for missing the last two games of the season, but he has also voided his contract guarantees worth $45 million.
If that wasn’t enough, there are now murmurs of a defamation lawsuit from the fan against DK and his team.
All anyone is going to tell you about this is “well, what did he expect for striking a fan?” Which is a fair statement that I can’t deny.
I would, however, just ask everyone to stop and think about why this even happened in the first place.
Why should Black people in America be forced to succumb to the desires and whims of racists?
Why should Black people in America be the ones on the receiving end of the punishment when they were the ones wronged?
Why is this kind of racism still happening in 2025, six and a half decades after Martin Luther King Jr marched on Washington during his fight for the civil rights of Blacks in America?
None of us has a concrete answer to the question, but if everyone just stopped to at least ask the question, we might somehow, some way, get closer to finding an answer together.
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