Lauren Holiday, the wife of New Orleans Pelicans guard Jrue Holiday, penned an article for The Players' Tribune in which she pledged to fight racism and recounted instances of racism her husband has dealt with, including a time where Jrue was handcuffed by police.
Holiday wrote about a time she and her sister-in-law were driving to a Starbucks after a morning workout when they were pulled over by police. The officer asked them to step out of the car and for their licenses, which she’d left at home.
Her sister in law called Jrue to bring them as he was roughly five minutes away. When the former UCLA star arrived with the IDs, he was placed in handcuffs.
“Even though the officer knew in advance that Jrue was my husband, and that he was coming to the scene, and why,” Holiday wrote. “Even though no one had explained to us why we had even been pulled over in the first place. And even though Jrue could not have been more careful, or more deferential, in how he made his approach. All the cop saw was this large black man getting out of a car.
“That was it — apparently that was enough.”
Holiday wrote that Jrue was released several minutes later after a second officer arrived and conversed with the first officer. She said she was given a ticket for her window “tint being too dark.”
“Let me repeat that: I drove without a license — while Jrue did absolutely nothing wrong.” She wrote. "And yet Jrue was the one who ended up in handcuffs."
Holiday said she chose to share the story after "realizing how privileged I’ve been, as a white person, to have encountered racism like I have and to have been able to compartmentalize it. To have been able to get angry about it on a personal level, but then move on with my day. To have been able to move on, period."
She said she no longer wanted to stay silent on issues of race as the "any racism at all, on any level, is worth confronting, and worth exposing, and worth speaking up about."
Read her full story