Daniel Bryan Comments On Racial Injustice, Wants To Educate Himself And Be Anti-Racist

Plenty of wrestlers have been outspoken regarding racial injustice in recent weeks as protests and movements across America continue following the murder of George Floyd.

Appearing on The Bellas Podcast, Daniel Bryan discussed the actions he’s taken as a white male to better educate himself and how others like him can also further their education.

“This is not a quick, fast conversation, but a I read Jill Lepore’s ‘These Truths.’ These truths are self-evident, that all men are created equal, it’s in the constitution, but is it self-evident? We as a country have not lived that since 1776, we haven’t treated all men as being equal, and that doesn’t even include women. I started having some conversations about race with people I work with and talk to. What I realized is, I’m very bad about talking about race. Right now, there’s a ton of people on social media, but at some point, this is probably going to die down. What I want for myself and movement is to educate myself in a way that when social media starts focusing on something else, that I’m still there for this fight and I understand the real core issues. Even though I know some of the history, I don’t know the real issues. When you talk about white privilege, I’m it. I’m a white male whose parents loved him and who has a good job. How do I talk about it? When I’m reading these books, I also don’t want to put pressure…’Oh, if I have a question, I’ll just ask Big E.’ Your black friends are not your google. They’re not there to answer all your ‘white person questions’ about race. I wanted to do a lot of education myself and to look up to the black men and women who have been fighting this fight for a long time.”

He continued, “Big E actually retweeted a woman named Victoria Alexander. She put out a list of books. Here’s an anti-racist book club, so not only do I want to be ‘not racist,’ that’s not good enough. Being anti-racist, not just from an individual level, but from a societal level, I want to be anti-racist. I want to support things that bring the black community up because it’s not right.”

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from my non-Black friends about how to be a better ally to Black people. I suggest unlearning and relearning through literature as just one good jumping off point, and have broken up my anti-racist reading list into sections: pic.twitter.com/gj5uko69OY

— Victoria Alexander (@victoriaalxndr) May 30, 2020

Bryan also mentioned the New Day podcast where they welcomed Andreas Hale to discuss racial injustice, their dealings with racism growing up, and more. You can find a full recap of that podcast by clicking here.

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