Richard Sherman opens up about Black Lives Matter movement following post written in his name

SEATTLE -- Seahawks star cornerback Richard Sherman shared his opinions on the Black Lives Matter movement Tuesday, with a seemingly impromptu media address that was emotional, personal and poignant.

Sherman, who spoke to the media at the Seahawks Wednesday press conference, began by confronting rumors that he had responded to a racially charged post on an activist's blog.

The alleged Black Lives Matter activist, King Noble, posted a picture on his blog late last week featuring Richard Sherman and teammate Marshawn Lynch underlined with racist text. In response to the blog, a poster who called himself Richard Sherman derided the blogger, calling the picture and text a lie and heavily criticizing King Noble.

Many media outlets incorrectly reported that it was Richard Sherman who made the response. 

On Tuesday, Sherman opened statements by saying he did not write the response post. He then continued to articulate on the post, as well as the Black Lives Matter movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=127&v=CUvvWZdKrBI

Richard Sherman's full response:

There was some article written, I know you guys have seen it, talking about king noble and all this -- I did not write that article -- a lot of people have sent it to me over the weekend and I thought that this would be the best place to address it. There were some points in that article, in that post, that were relevant and that I could agree with but there were also some obviously ignorant points in there. I don't think it's any time's a time to call out for an all-out war against police or any race of people. I thought that was an ignorant statement.

But as a black man, I do understand that black lives matter, I stand for that, I believe that wholeheartedly but I also think that there's a way to go about things and there's a way to do things, and I think the issue needs to be addressed internally before we move on because from personal experience, living in a hood, living in an inner city, you deal with things, you deal with people dying. I dealt with my best friend getting killed and it was two 35-year-old black men -- wasn't no police officer involved, wasn't any one else involved. I didn't hear anybody shouting black lives matter then. I think that's the point we need to get to, is that we need to deal with our own internal issues before we move forward and start pointing fingers and start attacking other people. We need to solidify ourselves as people and deal with our issues because I think as long as we have black on black crime and one black man killing another -- if black lives matter then they should matter all the time.

You should never let somebody get killed. that's somebody's son, that's somebody's brother, that's somebody's friend so you should always keep that in mind. There's a lot of police officers, right now, I don't think all cops are bad, i think there's some great cops out there who do everything in their power to uphold the badge, to uphold the honor and protect the people out in society but there are bad cops and I think that also needs to be addressed. I think the police officers we have right now, some of it is being brought to light because of video cameras -- everybody has a camera phone -- but these are things a lot of us have dealt with our whole lives and I think right now is a perfect time to deal with it. The climate we're in, everybody is being more accepting so I think the ignorance should stop. I think people should realize that at the end of the day, we're all human beings. Before we're Black, White, Asian, Polynesian ,Latino, we're humans. So it's up to us to stop it. Thank you.


The Seahawks did not immediately respond to Sherman's comments. But some of Sherman's teammates took to Twitter and praised his words.