NAACP asks Black athletes to stand against gerrymandering. We should all listen | Opinion

• The NAACP has launched a campaign asking Black athletes to boycott public universities in several southern states.
• This "Out of Bounds" campaign is a response to states weakening Black voting power following a Supreme Court decision.
• The NAACP argues that states should not benefit from Black athletes while simultaneously working to diminish their communities' rights.

Don’t go somewhere that doesn’t respect and value you.

That’s the crux of the NAACP’s new “Out of Bounds” campaign, which comes in response to the moves several southern states have made to weaken or erase Black voting power in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Callais decision.

Yes, the NAACP is asking that Black athletes, football and basketball players in particular, “withhold their commitments” or transfer from public colleges and universities in eight southern States. It also wants alums, donors and fans to stop buying tickets and merch.

“The NAACP will not watch the same institutions that depend on Black athletic prowess to fill their stadiums and their bank accounts remain silent while their states strip Black communities of their voice,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in the statement announcing the campaign.

But what the NAACP is really asking is that Black athletes and those who support them think about who is truly valuing them, and not reward states that will turn their backs on these young men and women the second their uniforms are off. For athletes to remind themselves they have worth beyond their athletic talents, and anyone who doesn’t recognize that is best avoided.

A state does not deserve to benefit — financially, materially, emotionally — from young Black men and women when it is actively working to strip them, their friends and their families of their basic rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court hollowed out what was left of the Voting Rights Act last month with its decision in Callais to throw out a congressional map in Louisiana that had been drawn to protect the voting rights of Black citizens. Without the protections overturned by Callais, there is little to stop lawmakers from redrawing voting maps to neutralize the voting power of minorities.

“Repeated often enough across the country, the same districting practice — really, hinging only on the partisan ambitions (or restraint) of state legislatures — could destroy most of the majority-minority districts that in the past 40 years the Voting Rights Act created. The Callais requirements have thus laid the groundwork for the largest reduction in minority representation since the era following Reconstruction,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent.

Sure enough, within days of the Callais decision, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee joined Louisiana in trying to redraw maps to limit Black voting power. Voters in North Carolina dropped a lawsuit challenging a state Senate map.

"These are not separate issues. The state that is working to erase your grandmother's congressional district is the same state whose governor will stand on the field and celebrate your touchdown or game-winning shot,” Tylik McMillan, national director of the NAACP’s youth and college division, said.

“We are asking young people — recruits, current athletes, fans — to see that connection clearly and to act on it.”

This isn’t about Red vs. Blue or political polarization that has gotten increasingly toxic. It’s about people only seeing the humanity of Black and Brown people when it suits their purpose.

Minority athletes are accepted, maybe even celebrated, so long as they're making White people happy. But once their careers are done, they are subjected to the same systemic racism this country can't shake. Discrimination for housing and jobs. Lower funding for their kids' schools. Biased policing.

Weakening the power of their vote, and voice.

Actions have consequences. Young men and women who have been gifted with otherworldly athletic talent have the power to make sure lawmakers intent on keeping anyone from being full participants in our democracy feel them.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.