If you ask Oakland native Danyel Smith where she’s from, expect her to be exact.

She’s from deep East Oakland, where the young black and brown kids running the streets beside her in the late ’80s and early ’90s had scant career opportunities.

For many, the top three options growing up were drug dealer, ballplayer and rapper.

Smith chose to be a rap journalist, and she began her career covering hip-hop in Oakland, writing for the East Bay Express, San Francisco Bay Guardian and SF Weekly.

When she was an editor at Vibe magazine in the mid-’90s, Smith was instrumental in elevating hip-hop journalism — and the writers covering the genre — into a respectable career that reported on black culture in a way that was recognizable to black culture.

Now Smith is a senior culture editor at the Undefeated, ESPN’s website that operates at the intersection of race, sports and culture.

For Smith, sports is culture.

“Sports is where everything is happening,” she told me. “It used to be music.”

Athletes such as former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who knelt for the national anthem during the 2016 NFL season, are at the forefront of the protests of police brutality and racial inequality.

This is problematic, of course, because the U.S. president can’t fathom why wealthy people would show empathy for poorer people.

Unfortunately for the president, athletes aren’t going to just “shut up and dribble,” as conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham suggested LeBron James and other athletes critical of the president do.

Those who argue that athletes have no business giving their political opinions are in need of a history lesson, because sports has been a platform for political statements since black people began pushing for the right to play collegiate and professional sports.

Let’s not forget that immensely popular boxer Muhammad Ali, considered one of the world’s great humanitarians, was the heavyweight champion in 1967 when he refused to enlist in the Army during the Vietnam War.

I wonder why the president and his supporters don’t want black athletes engaging in politics when they’re voters just like the rest of us. Why shouldn’t black athletes use their status and celebrity to promote causes important to them, causes that might impact the lives of someone who doesn’t have the resources of a millionaire?

It’s ludicrous that our misguided and malignant president was able to use his status and celebrity to peddle lies during his hostile takeover of the Republican Party, yet he doesn’t want black athletes to share their truths.

According to the Undefeated, almost 70 percent of the NFL players wreaking havoc on their bodies and brains to play the game are black. Still, in May the NFL announced a new policy that requires players to stand for the national anthem if they’re on the field.

How that plays out on and off the field is something Smith will be watching.

I met Smith, 52, this month at the Oakland Museum of California, where she was participating in a conversation on women in hip-hop as part of the museum’s sterling exhibit “Respect: Hip-Hop Style & Wisdom.”

The Vibe magazine Smith edited was my hip-hop bible. Vibe showed me I could write about topics that mattered in my life.

I’ve spent time as a music writer, but I began my journalism career as a sportswriter, covering high school football in the western tip of South Carolina. The games were more like community events because, on Friday nights in the fall, the local football stadium was the only place to be in town.

The games were cultural events.

Smith sat down with me in a museum auditorium before her talk. It was the day after the Golden State Warriors won their second consecutive NBA championship, and third in four years. Before the president took office, it was customary for championship teams of the four major sports leagues — NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL — to visit the White House and to give the president a jersey.

The president disinvited the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles this month. He disinvited the Warriors last season after Stephen Curry said he wasn’t interested. Instead, the team went to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., an obviously more enlightening experience.

For the second consecutive year, the Warriors are skipping the White House, a position the team announced while it chased the title. That meant that during this season’s NBA Finals, sportswriters were reporting on political stances.

Smith’s hometown Warriors didn’t win championships or make political statements when she was growing up. Smith’s Oakland was culturally different.

Before I moved to the Bay Area five years ago, a friend gave me a copy of “More Like Wrestling,” Smith’s 2003 novel about two black sisters growing up in Oakland in the mid-’80s as parts of the city were ravaged by crack cocaine.

“It’s spiritually autobiographical,” Smith said when I asked her about the book.

On an auditorium screen, a slideshow of photos featuring Smith in glamorous outfits and in the company of music celebrities played.

“That’s Oakland right there,” she shouted when she saw an image of three young girls at a bus stop on Vallecito Place, a road that runs beside Highland Hospital.

One of the girls was Smith. At 10 years old, Smith rode AC Transit buses by herself.

She said being raised in East Oakland caused her to be independent.

“It was just a different time back then,” Smith said. “Oakland was — at least my Oakland was — very black. I felt like my family knew every family in Oakland. I had a lot of freedom to move around Oakland by myself or with my sister.

“You can’t do that now.”

The culture shifted.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr