After mulling a boycott, the Nebraska men’s basketball team has decided to wear a t-shirt saying “Hate will never win” Saturday before a game against Rutgers, in protest of a white nationalist on campus.
According to the Omaha World-Herald, the Cornhuskers weighed whether to skip Saturday’s game but decided instead to make their voices heard through the shirts.
[Nebraska coach Tim] Miles said the vote was lopsided against a boycott. But the players, the majority of whom are black, want to convey a message against hate and racism, Miles said.
“And they’ve endured some of that, and their parents and grandparents have endured that,” he said, referring to racism.
They just want to make a strong stand, he said. “So I’m proud of them.”
On Thursday evening, the entire Cornhuskers team tweeted “Hate will never win” one after another.
Dang. Goosebumps.#Huskers pic.twitter.com/XWGVbHRtAE
— Kelly Mosier ? (@kmosier42) February 9, 2018
The players’ message serves as response to a Nebraska student named Daniel Kleve, a self-described white nationalist who said in a series of videos that the founding fathers didn’t care about “Mexicans’ or blacks’ opinion on how Europeans run their society,” that Martin Luther King, Jr. should have been stopped, while implying that at some point he wants to be “really violent” in pursuit of his beliefs.
Nebraska students have called for Kleve to be expelled, but the school says he is protected under the first amendment and cannot be disciplined.
Per the World-Herald, about 300 students attended a rally against hate speech Wednesday, with Miles also among the crowd.
[OWH]