Colin Kaepernick protests anthem due to treatment of minorities

This is part of Dr. King's seminal "Letter from Birmingham Jail", which he wrote to 7 white clergymen to voice his opinion of his organization of civil protests (all non-violent) in the city. Most of these clergymen wanted Dr. King and others to leave and let the local government handle the burgeoning civil rights issues in Birmingham. The clergymen felt that Dr. King's presence was helping incite violence.

Sound familiar?

For me, this tug-of-war of "racial" problems in this country, when left to white people to "manage" or "handle" or "define", has always been more-or-less an either/or proposition...

...and the only time any significant social changes occurred was when the test moved from "true or false" to "multiple choice".

National history has provided more than a few opportunities for all of these so-called "American patriots" to take the lead on racial reconciliation...and at virtually every encounter, they have either turned a blind eye to or turned their backs on it. And it is strangely understandable.

At the founding of the nation, slavery was chosen over abolition. After the Civil War, the Reconstruction period was abandoned and Jim Crow and a segregated America was allowed to exist for decades. Both ideas supported by the fear of economic inequities.

Only when Negroes put the question outside of the perpetual arguments between rich white people and poor white people...only then was there ever any social ground gained for everyone in this country. Only then was the nation's conscience stirred.

When the choice has been simply to either side with the Negro or not, the historical evidence suggests what the answer will be.

Self-preservation (of the individual or the idea) tends to win out in these scenarios.

But when Negroes have taken the lead and framed the argument around a more basic sentiment―human dignity and decency―fair treatment of all under the laws of the land―as the Abolitionist movement in the 1800s did to eventually create what was once the Republican party...and as the Civil Rights movement did in the 1950s and 1960s to help create these "model minorities" that can do now what Negroes were never allowed to do before them...

...when the argument moved from either/or to an option 3...and the risk involved in changing that paradigm assumed by someone outside the confines of the construct of the argument...

...then, and only then, has there been anything for better people to rally around.

I say these things plainly because I believe them utterly. This particular problem has never lain where men's hearts are. It lies where men's decisions are. Because that is what defines America―what men ultimately decide to do.

If there has ever been a mistake by Negroes in the calculus of social progress, it has been to entrust that progress to the contempt of those who have never desired for anything of the sort, in some strange attempt to alleviate a fear black people did not create, or to justify a wrong black people did not institute.

You hear these cries now for a "third party" for people who are disillusioned with the political machinations of the Democrats and the Republicans for the past 100 years or so...another choice...another option...because they all believed something that was never true: we can simply forget about the lie of racial division (supremacy or inferiority) which several institutions of democracy and order were created under in this country, and the damage subsequently caused to some in order to enrich or embolden others disproportionately...

Why did white people rally behind black people to stand against social injustice in the 1960s? What exactly was the catalyst? Especially since so many were perfectly fine with everything as it was before any Negro got uppity enough to say or do anything about it?

Fans of the Star Trek series would recognize this analogy―black people, to gain anything of substance in America have always resorted to the Kobayashi Maru gambit by Captain Kirk.

Negroes cannot be "liberal" any more than they can be "conservative". They cannot be "left-wing" any more than they can be "right-wing".

There is no state of mind before there is state of being. The conditions of the "test" (what is it to be an American? A patriotic American?) have to be altered, if there's ever a chance of anybody to answer that question truthfully...and thereby enough of us pass the test to move on as a nation.

Why did white people “follow” a Negro? Because a Negro knows, better than anybody else in this country, that ultimately he really has only two choices: to either pluck out an eye or cut off a finger.

...Unless he has, or creates or takes, another option.

If there is any moral base or compass in this country, it resides in the heart and mind of the Negro. I will concede (and only grudgingly), that the will of the American democratic experiment (if it must be so assigned in order to give it a clarity we can recognize) resides within the heart of a white man. But then that would mean that the soul of that very same experiment resides within the heart of a black man.

It’s not a binary equation we’re trying to solve or balance out here, even though that's exactly what was created at the inception of the nation. Human beings have hardly ever been so easy to manage. But we’d all better stop pretending that it is.

Because Donald Trump is waiting for all of us if we don’t.

 

Thank you for the thoughtful and thought-provoking post.

 

Exactly........the Right likes to use Veterans to advance their political agendas.

 

No need for a thank you, even though it's appreciated.

None of us do as much thinking about some things as we should. Myself included.

And to that, I'm also willing to concede a mulligan to the "Founding Fathers" of the nation...they were attempting something altogether different in the annals of human historical societies (despite some ultimately pretty mundane reasons--protection of "property" being the obvious one)...separating church from state.

If nothing else, in spirit at least, if not actual deed, they laid the groundwork for the establishment of individual endeavor championing collective will that we can all now benefit from.

And thank God we really aren't a "Christian" nation...too many Christians are under the impression that they can serve two masters equally...and have gone so far as to ignore their own biblical edicts against such a thing, and even reinvent some of those edicts, to just that very purpose.

Donald Trump can win "Christian" votes (from black or white people) with his personal and professional history of, at best, dubious financial dealings?

What does that tell you? What does that show you?

What "God" is it that they "serve" again?

...forgive me. Ranting is what I do...not very well, but....

 

http://www.foxsports.com/nfl/story/...-kaepernick-for-disrespecting-the-flag-083016

Jerry Rice calls out Colin Kaepernick for 'disrespecting the flag'

 

T_Man

 

Why are we still talking about this pathetic publicity stunt by an NFL player on his way out of the league? I mean, if he had a legitimate cause for protest that would be one thing, but that's not what is going on.

 

And Trump wants the Black Vote...

I am black man and a veteran....

The veteran side of me doesn't like what he's doing... But the black side of me understands.

If Trump was really serious maybe he should have reached out and talked to Collin instead of telling him to find another country.

T_Man

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Sounds like the veteran side of you is smart, you should listen to that side more often.

 

Another log on the fire of why Trump is going to lose the minority vote handily. He's been talking for about a week about the black community, problems in that community, albeit in front of mostly white audiences which is funny, but the first opportunity he has to respond to someone protesting about the problems Trump is allegedly confronting and he tells him to love it or leave it. And this is after his Wade murder tweet embarrassment. Trump is so stupid he can't get out of his own way.

 

In my mind, if you're one of those idiots who complains about 'political correctness gone wild', you don't get to also complain about Kaepernick's protest.

 

Those two things aren't similar at all. One is an idiot 1%er disrespecting his country as a publicity stunt ahead of his football career ending, the other is people just being real.

 

Totally agree with you...

T_Man

 

I agree with this.

I personally think that he should have stood up for the anthem and I believe that people get the right to criticize him; but he shouldn't be forced to do so.

Won't matter because most likely he is almost done in the NFL.

 

Yes... Yes... The more prone you are to patriotic symbolism the more intelligent you are.

I was wrong the whole time. Here I thought that people who are so easy irked by symbolic gestures are idiots.

 

I wonder if race relations in America will still only focus on black and white in the next 20 or 30 years.

 

There is a culmination of 400 years of explictly racist policy that only theoretically ended 50 years ago. It takes time.

 

We can only hope the race baiters die off and don't pass their sickness to their children.

 

Yes... It's the race baiting by the blacks, not the 400 years of racist policy they only theoretically ended less then one human life span ago.

 

Beauty.







the Negro heart is the most underestimated segment of my Americanism.