Juan Adams addresses racial injustice in open letter: ‘I was viewed an ‘adult level threat’ since I was 12 years old’

Former UFC fighter Juan Adams knows firsthand the frustration of being racially profiled.

A towering six-foot-five heavyweight, Adams has to cut weight to make the 265-pound division limit and while his size and stature have benefited him in his athletic pursuits, it has also made him occasionally stand out in the wrong way in day-to-day life. In an open letter originally published on his Facebook page, Adams touched upon his own experiences with racial injustice as a means of discussing the larger issue currently facing the United States as the country deals with widespread protests and riots incited by the killing of George Floyd.

“For my part, I was blessed with different educational opportunities than most from that neighborhood, but I’ve still experienced racial profiling and had unnecessary encounters with law enforcement,” Adams wrote. “I was viewed an ‘adult level threat’ since I was 12 years old — and as soon as I reached a certain size, my mother and grandmother had the talk with me that’s too common among black youths… the one about how to conduct myself should I ever have an encounter with law enforcement.

“I always chalked it up to ‘that’s just the way it is,’ and yet I always knew it shouldn’t be that way.”

Adams, who is currently signed to France’s ARES Fighting Championship, goes on to explain that he grew up in the same Houston neighborhood as Floyd. He also mentions the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man killed while jogging in Georgia by two white men this past February.

For his part, Adams condemned the more violent aspects of the ongoing protests, though he also knows where much of the sentiment behind these actions is coming from.

“I understand that way of thinking and feeling, and in many ways, I feel the same way — but I am also torn by the discriminate and indiscriminate violence, vandalism, and theft characteristic of protests,” Adams wrote. “By nature, the current wave of activity is discriminatory in that it identifies an entire group (all police or everyone in the majority of the population) as being at fault and seeks retribution from all members of those groups regardless of their participation in the injustices. The looting and destruction to private and public property are also indiscriminate in that they damage businesses, neighborhoods, and public institutions regardless of the benefits they may offer.

“I have watched and read reports of white-owned, black-owned, Asian-owned, and Hispanic-owned businesses damaged by those participating in some activities in select cities over the past weekend. Perhaps worst of all, bad people and uniformed actors widen the racial divide and take the focus off the deaths of Arbery and Floyd and the underlying issues that need to be resolved.”

Adams, 28, suggests that the “battle” needs to be fought on three levels: individual, institutional, and social/cultural. For the individual, Adams calls for the police offers involved in Floyd’s death to be brought to justice and he encourages civilians to keep documenting examples of authorities engaging in impropriety.

At the institutional level, Adams believes there needs to be greater leadership and accountability, and improved legislation, with the responsibility also falling on citizens to vote. Culturally speaking, Adams admitted that change at that level “comes very slowly,” and he again emphasized leadership, education, and communication.

“We are seeing change at this level and we should continue our efforts in this direction, but we need to realize that changing actions requires changing minds and that this type of change is very slow to happen,” Adams wrote. “Those are just a few ideas that may be able to drive positive change, but to be honest, I have more questions than answers, more doubt than certainty.”

Read Adams’s full open letter below:

The Battle Against Racial Injustice Must be Fought on 3 Fronts

As a black man with a fledgling following online, I feel compelled to write about the current civilian activity related to the killings of #GeorgeFloyd and #AhmaudArbery. Like you, I’m a human being who is capable of feeling a complete range of emotions. And despite my platform as a professional athlete, I suspect that the totality of my thoughts cannot be understood in the 8-plus minutes it will take you to read this post, which is ironically the same amount of time a Minneapolis police officer kept his knee on the right side of George’s neck — resulting in George’s murder.

First, if it isn’t obvious, let me state this for the record — I hesitate to speak for an entire race. Every individual has unique experiences that frame their thinking, actions, and ultimately who they are. I can speak only from my experience and express only what I think and feel about these incidents and the bigger institutional and social/cultural problems I think have given rise to these tragically unnecessary deaths and a lot of what led up to them.

George Floyd, while born in Fayetteville, N.C., was raised in the same neighborhood as I was in Houston, Texas. For my part, I was blessed with different educational opportunities than most from that neighborhood, but I’ve still experienced racial profiling and had unnecessary encounters with law enforcement. I was viewed an ‘adult level threat’ since I was 12 years old — and as soon as I reached a certain size, my mother and grandmother had the talk with me that’s too common among black youths… the one about how to conduct myself should I ever have an encounter with law enforcement. I always chalked it up to “that’s just the way it is,” and yet I always knew it shouldn’t be that way.

I believe that the late-May wave of protests, along with the sideshow episodes of looting and property destruction, are a collective expression of the same way I sometimes feel, resulting from a culmination of years of black lives (and the lives of other minorities) being institutionally marginalized and people of color often being treated as something less than human. For example, being handcuffed and held face-down on pavement because an officer thinks you could be bringing drugs to a renaissance festival or being accused of having weed in your car when a friend’s alarm goes off at their house and you don’t know their code. Or, when a police officer has their hand on their gun when they approach you to talk about a reported disturbance at your place of employment when no such disturbance even existed in the first place. The protests and the acts of theft and destruction surrounding them are, in my view, an eruption of emotion after years, decades, and centuries of being told and shown that “you don’t matter.” While I know my life matters — no more or less than another — when we say #BlackLivesMatter, it’s because the larger world we live in seems to constantly tell us through policy making and policing us that our lives really don’t matter.

Looking back in history, we can see violent revolution and war have — for both better and worse — shaped the world. It was a revolution and several wars that created the United States of America. It was a civil war that freed slaves. Many people are now looking at the current situation and thinking both peaceful and violent revolution are the only solutions. They weren’t heard with kneeling; they weren’t heard with marching; so, now some folks feel the need to disrupt at a whole new level. Many likely feel that when the system in power is failing of all those it’s meant to serve, that system needs to be drastically changed or replaced.

I understand that way of thinking and feeling, and in many ways, I feel the same way — but I am also torn by the discriminate and indiscriminate violence, vandalism, and theft characteristic of protests. By nature, the current wave of activity is discriminatory in that it identifies an entire group (all police or everyone in the majority of the population) as being at fault and seeks retribution from all members of those groups regardless of their participation in the injustices. The looting and destruction to private and public property are also indiscriminate in that they damage businesses, neighborhoods, and public institutions regardless of the benefits they may offer. I have watched and read reports of white-owned, black-owned, Asian-owned, and Hispanic-owned businesses damaged by those participating in some activities in select cities over the past weekend. Perhaps worst of all, bad people and uniformed actors widen the racial divide and take the focus off the deaths of Arbery and Floyd and the underlying issues that need to be resolved.

We need to realize that we are fighting this battle on three fronts — the social/cultural, institution, and individual levels — and our approach must be very different at each level. At the individual level, we need to bring the perpetrators to justice. Anyone of any color with any sense who has watched the videos of the killings of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd know that the perpetrators committed murder or, at the very least, manslaughter, and should have been immediately arrested and charged. And anyone of any color with any sense who watched television footage of looters in cities and towns across the nation must also know that those individuals need to similarly be found and charged for their crimes. Our best weapon in this war has been video. Having police officers equipped with body cams and making all of that video publicly accessible may help to reduce racial profiling and other injustices and help to identify law enforcement officers who need to be disciplined, fired, or charged for any crimes they commit on the job. We also should be prepared to protest when necessary, because authorities often fail to act until significant pressure is applied, as in both of the recent cases — Arbery and Floyd.

(As a related aside, if you haven’t downloaded the ACLU app yet, consider doing so. When you record anything using the app — for example, an interaction with police, someone assaulting another person, etc. — the video is immediately uploaded to the ACLU servers and stored for immediate access and long-term use. This way, even if your phone is confiscated or broken, documentation of what you recorded remains in place.)

At the institutional level, we need to work toward improving leadership and legislation. We can expect the most significant changes when we play a bigger role in institutions, including government and law enforcement. We can also drive change through voting, protesting peacefully, and holding those in power accountable for their decisions and actions.

The bigger battle is at the social/cultural level, which is the root of bad actors and bad actions within institutions and among individuals. At this level, change comes very slowly. Solutions at this level may include electing and appointing more people of color to leadership positions, building more inclusive work environments, integrating neighborhoods, changing our views on “law enforcement” to more of a “guardian” mindset (as was suggested in 2015 in the Final Report of the “President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing”), and engaging in conversation across racial and ethnic groups regarding our differences, hopes, aspirations, and the injustices we consistently observe. Integration/inclusion would be especially beneficial but is extremely difficult due to socio-economic divisions and continued resistance from many in the majority who may still view minorities as a threat to their way of life. We are seeing change at this level and we should continue our efforts in this direction, but we need to realize that changing actions requires changing minds and that this type of change is very slow to happen.

Those are just a few ideas that may be able to drive positive change, but to be honest, I have more questions than answers, more doubt than certainty. Please post a response to let me know what you think.