At a press conference today, Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James spoke about his fears as a parent now that his son is old enough to leave the house on his own. Specifically, he's concerned about his child having an encounter with police officers:

"It's a scary thought right now to think, if my son gets pulled over—you tell your kids, 'if you just comply, and you just listen to the police, that [if] they will be respectful things will work themselves out.' And you see these videos that continue to come out, it's a scary situation. If my son calls me and says he's been pulled over, that I'm not that confident that things are going to go well, and my son is going to return home. And my son just started sixth grade. So we just want the conversation to continue, to keep going."

James was careful to hedge against the backlash to come:

"And I don't have the answer, none of us have the answer. But the more times we can talk about it, the more times we can conversate about it—because I'm not up here saying that all police are bad. Because they're not. I'm not up here saying that all kids are crazy..."

The Cavs forward is one of a growing number of black athletes to speak out on issues of racial inequality in policing following Colin Kaepernick's national anthem protest. The question is: What does it say that one of the most famous African-Americans alive has these fears? Imagine what it's like for those whose faces aren't on billboards.

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Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

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