It sounded a bit like that scene from 'Remember the Titans,' the one where quarterback Ronnie Bass tries to bring a couple of his black teammates into a segregated restaurant. Surrounded by open tabes, the white male manager approaches the group and says, "We're full tonight, boys." Then he kicks them out.
Remember the Titans is set in the year 1971.
Now here was Matthew Stafford, nearly 50 years later, experiencing the same shame, the same 'embarrassment' as Ronnie Bass. And the same frustration with our society at large.
In an essay published Friday on the Players' Tribune titled 'We Can't Just Stick To Football,' Stafford urges our country to acknowledge its flaws: "Police brutality, white privilege, racism — it’s all real," he writes. Don't believe him? Consider Stafford's experience with white privilege this spring.
To get some work in during quarantine, Stafford arranged to use a field near his home in Atlanta. Danny Amendola joined him for four days and the two had no problem. A week later, Stafford went to the same field with four of his black teammates. Before they could get their cleats on, a security guard told them they were trespassing and demanded that they leave.
"I remember I was standing there in my socks, just kind of stunned and confused, like, What?" Stafford writes. "But he didn’t even want to listen."
Then the man called the police.
"We were there for maybe 10 minutes total," Stafford writes. "Nobody said a bad word to him. And he still called the police and told them that we were being 'uncooperative' and 'not leaving the property.'
"Obviously, we got out of there immediately.
"I was embarrassed to have put my teammates in that situation, especially when I was told that it was cool to use the field. Especially when I had been on the same field with Danny with no problems.
"The only difference is what we all know in our hearts. Danny and I are white."
Stafford was among several Lions who knelt for the national anthem before the season-opener against the Bears. He said this week it "just felt like the right thing to do." He's been at the forefront of the team's ongoing conversations about racial and social injustice. And the stories he's heard have shaken him to his core.
Like this one about Trey Flowers and his anxiety around the police.
"Trey was explaining that if he were to ever get pulled over in his car — something that I have experienced many times without even thinking twice about it — he would roll down his window, put both hands on the wheel, and ask the officer if he would like him to step out of the car so he can handcuff him," Stafford writes.
"Just so that he is not seen as a threat.
"Just so the officer can’t say, 'Oh, he was reaching here, he was reaching there.…'
"Just so he makes it back home."
Stafford and his wife Kelly recently donated $1.5 million to their alma mater, Georgia, for social justice programs and scholarships. He writes in his essay that "when you hear your teammates telling these stories — and getting so emotional that they’re breaking down crying — you can’t just sit there and be silent." He says he won't allow football to be a 'distraction' from more important issues in our country.
"We can’t just stick to football," Stafford writes. "Not as a team. Not as an organization. And we shouldn’t as a country."