Masai Ujiri didn’t know what to say. He just didn’t. He kept quiet back in December when the New York Times reported that Donald Trump, the American President, had said that Haitians with U.S. visas “all had AIDS,” and that Nigerians in the United States would never “go back to their huts” once they saw America.

Ujiri fumed. He was furious, frankly. He kept quiet.

And then came Trump’s comments about Africa, made during a meeting this week over immigration policy at the White House. After arguing to keep Haiti out of a deal, Africa came up, and Trump said “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

Ujiri didn’t want to stay quiet any longer.

“We’re proud,” the Nigerian-born Toronto Raptors president said in a phone interview between scouting meetings. “Everybody’s put in different situations, but we’re proud of where we came from. My wife is from Guinea and Sierra Leone; she just came back from Sierra Leone. My dad is from Nigeria. My mom is from Kenya. I consider myself to be a son of Africa and a person of the world, and I want to raise my kids (to know) that there are no shitholes anywhere. There’s no shitholes anywhere in this world because we were born in different places for a reason.”

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“To think of Africa that way, or wherever is called that: Have you ever been? Have you ever visited? Have you ever seen these places? What do you know about these people that you call this? A lot of it to me is noise, and we need to think about who we’re listening to. What kind of leaders are we listening to? What kind of leader are we listening to? What are we following?”

Ujiri, like everybody else, has watched what is happening in the United States in the past two years. He is an avid observer of politics, and he has spent time with leaders: Barack Obama, Justin Trudeau, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, Uhuru Kenyatta, of Kenya, George Weah of Liberia, and more. He has visited the refugee camp in Dadaab, among others. He has visited La Loche, Saskatchewan, where a school shooting occurred in 2016. He runs Giants of Africa, the charity which tries to empower African youth through basketball.

The Raptors are bringing more kids from La Loche to Toronto next week, after bringing 10 to Toronto in 2017, have a You Can Play night for the LGBT equality charity foundation scheduled for Jan. 17, and Ujiri has been an advocate for hiring and empowering women in the Raptors organization. Ujiri thinks a lot about leadership.

And he is appalled.

“Is this a way to lead?” he said, his voice rising. “Leadership should be inspiring.”

“This past summer, I was in Kenya, I was in Rwanda, I was in Nigeria, I was in Senegal, I was in Ivory Coast. In all these places, and I didn’t see no shithole. I saw great people with great hope. I saw happiness. I saw proud people. OK, if there are people who live in huts, so what? That’s where God has put them for now. You mean to tell me there are no poor areas in America? In Canada? All over the world? That’s just the opportunity that people have been given, and better opportunity will come to them. But so what? To look down on people because they didn’t grow up with money? It’s so sad that somebody is like this, that this is our leader, the leader of the free world. This is him? This is it? Wow.”

Ujiri is not alone in the NBA in speaking out against this president. San Antonio Spurs coach and president Gregg Popovich responded to Trump’s disrespect for dead troops in October by saying, “This man in the Oval Office is a soulless coward who thinks that he can only become large by belittling others.”

Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, whose father was assassinated by Islamic jihadists in Beirut in 1984, has been outspoken as well. He said, “It’s tough when you want there to be some respect and dignity, and there hasn’t been any.” Detroit Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy said, after the election, “I don’t think anybody can deny this guy is openly and brazenly racist and misogynistic.” Players, too, have criticized Trump. The NBA has led sports in its embrace of informed dissent.

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Ujiri comes from a different place than those men, literally and figuratively. He came from Nigeria to America on a basketball scholarship; he stayed and built something remarkable, something unprecedented. He is the only African-born general manager or team president in all of North American sports. Ujiri has watched as this administration has tried to enact policies that clearly target people of colour, and he could not stay quiet any longer.

“I’m so grateful for the opportunity the NBA has given me, that sports has given me,” said Ujiri. “And as a leader, you have to take it and create paths for other people. That’s what we should be doing, is creating paths for other people. My job will end. I’ll get fired, or I’ll go do something else. But I’m not worried about me. I’ve met and passed expectations of myself. But I want to do more. I want to win, but the most important thing is, how do you bring people along? How do you bring people along?”

“Africa is like everywhere else: It has rich people and poor people, it has great cities, great towns, great villages, and great culture. And it also has its challenges. When people that live in these places hear these kind of comments, what hope in the world do they have? What kind of hope? I don’t know. I cannot even imagine. We should be giving these people hope. We should be inspiring them. To me, for the leader of the free world, that’s the way it should be.”

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