Is the escapism of sports code for "I don't want to think of issues affecting America"

The Game Room
1

Most people worldwide, not only Americans like sports as an escape from their daily problems, personal problems.

Some feel that the coronavirus health and social world pandemic makes us want to escape to sports to deviate from the problems of the world.

We did it during the 1960s tensions, post-September 11, 2001 attacks. Who doesn’t remember the 2001 Yankees-Diamondbacks World Series, the 2002 Winter Olympics, the 2002 NBA Finals after 9/11?

However, some who criticized Muhammad Ali and Colin Kaepernick for speaking out on racial issues affecting black people in the 1960s and 2010s say that they did not want to hear about those issues because they specifically escaped to watch sports* to avoid issues like that?
*

What do you think of that notion?

2

To some extent, yes. For many, sports is something that gives the enjoyment of temporarily turning off your brain from politics and whatnot for a while. Sports also serves as a big unifier, in the sense that (almost) everyone in Philadelphia, for instance, can root for the Eagles when they are gunning for a Super Bowl, ***regardless ***of race, gender, wealth, privilege/disadvantage, occupation, age, etc. That’s why some are so pissed off when athletes tout some political cause, because it introduces precisely the very topic (politics) into sports that these sports fans wanted to avoid.