Jaylen Brown doesn’t like watching President Donald Trump or other government officials address the nation amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The 23-year-old Boston Celtic told CNN’s Christina Macfarlane that it gives him more anxiety about the situation.
“It just causes more anxiety and more panic, because I don’t feel like people are on the same page,” Brown said in the piece, published Friday morning. “I think that we should be united in our stance. It’s not a political game.”
That’s why Brown has been taking to his own platform during quarantine to pass along the facts. He was one of the first NBA players to come out with a strong statement about the effects the virus could have on our healthcare system, wrote an op-ed in “The Guardian” about the pandemic and took to his Instagram to urge Georgia residents to stay home, despite the governor’s decision to reopen the state on Friday.
He expanded on that last point with CNN.
“As a Georgia native, I feel uneasy that I have family and I have friends there that will be the first to go back out into society,” Brown said. “I don’t want to see Georgia be … the guinea pig for what the economy is trying to do and start back up.”
He feels a duty to speak up and educate people, especially about how the virus is disproportionately affecting people of color significantly more, further exposing the issues in our healthcare system that needed fixing a long time ago.
“I just feel obligated,” Brown said. “Coming from the community that I come from, even though I might have raised my social mobility by being an athlete and being able to have a certain level of economics, I come from humble beginnings.
“I think systemically there are aspects of our health care that need to be addressed. I think that there’s been like elephants in the room in this country for a long period of time.”
Brown is wise beyond his years.
