OPINION – Courage has its price.
While we all like to think we would be able to stand up for our principles, regardless of the outcome, I wonder how many of us would be willing to walk away from a mountain of cash to prove a point.
Right now, it is costing Colin Kaepernick a pretty penny.
Kaepernick was a decent quarterback on a lousy NFL team when he decided that he could no longer ignore his conscience.
Last season, Kaepernick began a silent protest against what he termed as police brutality and racial inequality during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said, promising to protest until “the (American flag) represents what it’s supposed to represent.”
In the beginning, he took a seat on the bench as the national anthem played. But, after discussion with former NFL player and military veteran Nate Boyer, Kaepernick decided that instead of sitting during the anthem, he would take a knee, as a show of respect for current and former members of the military.
He has been joined by more than 60 others, through the end of the 2017 pre-season, who have offered gestures from sitting or kneeling during the anthem to placing a hand on a teammate’s shoulder or linking arms on the sidelines, as 30 members of the Cleveland Browns did before their game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
But, Kaepernick launched the protests, which is why he is unemployed at the moment.
In March, he opted out of his contract with the San Francisco 49ers and became a free agent.
The other 31 teams in the NFL have not been beating down his door with offers.
He’s had a few talks with teams here and there, a sort of token representation by a couple of teams – the Jacksonville Jaguars, Seattle Seahawks and Baltimore Ravens – but there were no takers.
The NFL has a horrendous image problem right now, the least of which should be Kaepernick.
Players are getting hauled into jail for beating up their spouses and girlfriends.
Players are getting charged with sexual assault.
Some are deciding to end their careers prematurely rather than risk cerebral damage, a growing concern as more and more former players turn up with traumatic brain injuries and cognitive problems as a result of brain damage sustained on the football field. It’s called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative disease believed to be caused by too many blows to the head. A neuropathologist recently completed a study of the brains of 111 deceased NFL players. All but one had CTE.
We’re still seeing NFL players getting hauled into jail for drugs and booze and we still see players and former players picked up for violent behavior – from barroom bawls to murder.
But, Kaepernick is the one being blackballed.
The issue is putting players at odds with owners and fans alike and is an indication of just how deep the racial chasm is in the United States.
Kaepernick broke no laws, no team or league policies.
He harmed nobody.
He displayed exemplary courage to stand up in an environment where individualism is frowned upon, especially if owners think it might interfere with the cash cows that are NFL franchises.
This isn’t, of course, the first time athletes have stood for equality.
There was Muhammad Ali, who lost millions of dollars when he refused to be drafted into the U.S. Army.
“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights?” Ali said before being stripped of his heavyweight title and banned from boxing for refusing military induction.
There was John Carlos and Tommie Smith, the two Olympians who gave a black power salute as they stood on the medal stand during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.
“We were concerned about the lack of black assistant coaches. About how Muhammad Ali got stripped of his title. About the lack of access to good housing and our kids not being able to attend the top colleges,” Smith said years later.
And, there was the venerable Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier on April 15, 1947
“I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made,” he wrote in his autobiography.
In comparison, Kaepernick’s protest is small potatoes.
Colin Kaepernick has pro credentials.
His stats are better than most backup quarterbacks in the NFL and better than some starters.
He is only 29, with, if he remains healthy, many more seasons in him.
But, he doesn’t fit the All-American Boy, clean-cut image of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
He is tall, slender, wears an Afro hairstyle and has tattoos.
And, he is smart enough to not only read an opposing defensive scheme, but to read other books, real books, that go beyond which play works best on third and long.
He has a competitor’s heart, but his courage, as we have seen, extends far beyond the playing field.
Kaepernick had a $126 million contract with San Francisco.
He had the option to renew at the end of last season.
He passed because he was a decent quarterback on a lousy team.
Under most circumstances, a quarterback of his stature would have been snatched up the moment he entered free agency.
But, because he dared to speak his mind, because he didn’t fit the mold, teams are afraid of signing him, even though many in the game have touted his abilities.
Dr. Martin Luther King told us he had a dream.
Kaepernick, however, is showing us how those lofty dreams can be dashed and turned into nightmares.
No bad days!
Ed Kociela is an opinion columnist for St. George News. The opinions stated in this article are his own and may not be representative of St. George News.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @STGnews, @EdKociela
Copyright St. George News, SaintGeorgeUtah.com LLC, 2017, all rights reserved.
This protest proves this is a free country and there are consequences for your actions.
I for One are not in your ” WE”. You moron?
This guy raised by American Parents is as silly as you?
Write some news Eddy- this is crap n we all know it-
What he did was NOT courageous. It frightens me that anyone could see this as such.
He was an employee at work. You do not get to make your personal political statements on someone else’s time.
He should have been immediately fired!
Boy oh boy, us white folks are just terrible oppressors to everyone. White demons is what we are, huh Ed? All of us evil white people should just all kill ourselves immediately, and then all the world’s problems will be solved!
as a side note: football is an idiot game, and it’s idiot simple minded folk who are fans and pay to see such nonsense. This idiot with his whiny little protests doesn’t know his fan base very well. Football is a game watched by “redblooded ‘murican patriots!”. The only way I’d be interested in watching nonsense like that is if they went out on the field and literally killed each other. Ya know, like bring back gladiator games, the real deal, where big burly muscle heads kill each other for sport. That I’d pay to watch. Ed Kociela, have you bought your ticket to the congo yet? let me guess, your too scared? lol 😉
“Boy oh boy, us white folks are just terrible oppressors to everyone. White demons is what we are, huh Ed? All of us evil white people should just all kill ourselves immediately, and then all the world’s problems will be solved!”
– by all means please do us all a favor!
racist!
personally, I really don’t care what Kap or anyone else does during the national anthem. However, I follow the NFL closely, and have for many years. It is obvious to me that Ed does and has not. “Under most circumstances, a quarterback of his stature would have been snatched up the moment he entered free agency.” No, Ed, that is not true. Kaepernick simply is not a good quarterback at the professional level. He had his moment during the “read option” craze a few years ago, but since that time he has, quite frankly, sucked on the field. In an atmosphere as competitive as the NFL where winning is all anyone really cares about, some team, probably numerous teams, would have signed Kaepernick if they thought he could produce in games. He’s just a bad player, and politics has nothing to do with it.
Great points, Chris! The NFL demonstrated with the signing of Michael Vick that teams are more concerned about a player’s skills than their off-field or sideline antics.
In Kaepernick’s case, his not being signed by an NFL team is more a matter of a team’s return on investment than being “blackballed” as Ed claims. Most people consider Kaepernick to now be backup QB-caliber. Under the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement, a 7 year NFL veteran (like Kaepernick) is guaranteed a $900K per year salary.
Compare that to the annual salary of the current 49ers backup QB, CJ Beathard – $176K guaranteed, $882K with incentives. The 49ers 3rd string QB, Nick Mullens – $0 guaranteed, $122K with incentives.
Most NFL teams are like the 49ers: they can sign a younger QB for a lot less money than they’d have to pay Kaepernick.
Vick is a good example. His dog fighting “baggage” far exceeded Kap’s national anthem faux pas.
What’s ironic about these protests is that the people making them are the living embodiment of what blacks are capable of accomplishing in this country now. Millionaire athletes taking a knee because they are oppressed? Oh no, of course, it’s not them who are oppressed, it’s the millions of other blacks who are being…oh wait, it’s actually absolutely, utterly, completely illegal to oppress anyone because of his or her race, gender, or religion. And that law is one that is enforced nearly 100% of the time. Even the appearance of racism can result in a huge lawsuit now.
I’m personally getting pretty tired of listening to this crap.
America is a country in which equality of opportunity absolutely exists. Right now. Any black man, red man, yellow man, tan man, brown man, or purple man has access to the exact same opportunities as any white man. In fact, blacks have access to MORE opportunities because we are bending over backwards to accommodate them. Affirmative action? What’s that if not systemic racism against white people?
But here’s the rub: Equality of opportunity does not equal equality of outcome. If blacks are not taking advantage of the opportunities presented to them, who’s fault is that?
I’ve listened to enough media crap about racism. Yes, racism exists. But no, it is not holding back any particular race of people. The law is on their side. We elected a black President. The music charts are dominated by black artists. Blacks are highly over-represented in movies and television based on population percentages. But we’re all still evil racists?
No wonder there’s so much more white nationalism now than ever before. No matter what we do to ensure they are treated fairly, blacks will not stop acting as if whites owe them something. That much, at least, is obvious at this point.
Well I owe them nothing. As a culture, they are a problem. Instead of integrating with the prevailing culture they choose to separate themselves. It’s a seldom-discussed truth that suburban middle-class white people have very little tolerance for the worst black behavior – the loudness, the violence, the crime, the pride in being uneducated, the obvious disdain for whites, the butchering of the language, and the list goes on. But they continue to behave that way anyway.
You think I, an educated white man, haven’t had to modify MY behavior to get ahead in the world? Don’t be ridiculous, of course I have adjusted myself to meet society’s demands.
So unless blacks choose to correct these problems, I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do for them. Certainly there are many, many blacks who have integrated quite successfully with white culture, which is, again, the prevailing culture here in the USA. We built the country and we run it. We made, and continue to make, the rules, social and otherwise. But many blacks simply refuse to follow them. I have no sympathy for them, and I sure … have no sympathy for Colin Kaepernik.
Ed. ellipsis.
amen to that. I think their goal is to become total oppressors. Not black folk themselves but whoever is leading this agenda. Their agenda is gonna bite them back one of these days, and hard. I suspect I already know who’s behind it. It’s nothing to to them. it’s their m/o.
The whole conversation is confusing. Why are we still talking about what whites can do for blacks? We’ve already done everything we can to help them be totally equal members of our society, short of adopting ebonics as the official language.
It’s time we stop talking about what’s wrong with white people and start talking about what blacks need to do to start being contributing members of society.
A good start would be putting an end to the handouts. In that way, maybe it is white people’s fault that blacks can’t seem to get it together – we’ve not properly motivated them. “Adapt or starve” is the best motivator.
How have “we” done everything we can?
We know black Americans have a higher rate of poverty per capita than every group other than American Indians. Both of those groups have a long history of oppression. Legal oppression only ended 50 years ago. But we know other structural forms of racism exist. Many of these “second generation” forms of bias seems innocuous but result in real affects on people of color: racial hiring bias, a school funding structure that provides inadequate education in poorer communities, criminal justice bias against minorities, etc. That doesn’t mean all Americans are racist but it does mean our implicit biases continue to harm minorities even if overt racism has been reduced.
Your comment about ebonics is a racially charged stereotype that serves no purpose. Same with your notion about “blacks can’t seem to get it together”. It exposes a racial prejudice on your part that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. You do realize white Americans receive the majority of handouts in the country, correct? The country has experimented with “adapt or starve” and it doesn’t work; it just replicates and increases poverty. Its going on now in communities across the country.
I never said I wasn’t a racist. In fact, anyone who says they aren’t a racist is lying. Racism is nothing more than understanding certain characteristics of certain races. The problematic type of racism is taking these things as a given and acting upon them. The normal type of racism is expecting one thing but being open to others. That’s the kind of racist I am.
It isn’t racism that’s the problem. Any fool can see that the black race has a lot of issues that prevent its members from functioning well in white society. The problem is that we are now expected to disregard all those issues and pretend that WE are the problem. I call that ignoring the truth in favor of the lie.
When I say “Blacks can’t seem to get it together,” that’s the truth. Every law is in their favor. All they have to do is start behaving in a civilized manner and the world is their oyster. If I’m in competition for a job or a promotion with a black man, the black man will definitely get it; if for no other reason than to avoid even the appearance of racism, but for the secondary reason that he represents a big tax break for the company.
Blacks are also categorically given preferential treatment for college entrance. They even have their own set of requirements that are lower than those for white people. It’s as if we are saying, “Okay, we get that by the age of 18, you are not going to be as smart as a white person, so now we will do this for you.”
Can I not say that? Is that TOO TRUE?
So yes, we have done everything we can. From my perspective, certainly we have done everything we WILL do for them. Preferential treatment in both the job market and education market seems like a lot to me. Is it not enough? What else is there?
Also, “Adapt or Starve” does work. It will be one or the other. Every time.
You can say whatever you want as long as its within the terms of service of this site. What you can’t expect is to do so in an unquestioned manner. There is no safe harbor with the first amendment; in fact there is strong precedent to believe its exists so society can actually learn to distance itself from the type of abhorrent ideologies you espouse. Some believe shaming would be best in this situation. I disagree and just think persistently challenging it with more humane ideas and actually sticking to fact helps more in the long run.
You don’t randomly get to narrow down the definition of racism or how it affects people. Racism is alot more than the gross generalizations you provide. You have displayed alot more than some type of benign racism that isn’t put into action. You have actively vocalized support for racial profiling which is an illegal, unconstitutional action that clearly shows how the law is not in favor of people of color (in this case black and muslim).
I think you also misunderstand affirmative action. The only laws that affect private business, ones without government contracts, are equal opportunity employment laws. They only prohibit implicit and overt bias in hiring but do not favor one race, sex or ethnicity over the other. They are rarely enforced because it takes employees filing complaints and having evidence to succeed. You also grossly overstate how the programs at colleges work. For the most part, the systems you describe only come into play with private scholarships and grants designed to help minorities enter higher education through offsetting costs. Your notions and allegations have never held up to tests in law and the SCOTUS has constantly found universities can apply limited measures to offset the historically abysmal demographics of universities. You consistently misrepresent the scale and content of such programs.
There is no merit to the prejudiced “it isn’t racism that’s the problem. Any fool can see that the black race has a lot of issues that prevent its members from functioning well in white society.” We are not a white society and never have been (though we are a society that privileges whiteness). Race is a fluid idea that has no basis in biology. The definition of white has changed constantly through American history and still does. And more than anything the color of ones skin does not predict behavior in any fashion. The vast majority of minorities function plenty well within AMERICAN CULTURE, something they are part of and help define. You continually espouse racist and white supremacist ideas on this forum that have gone uncontested for long enough. Whiteness does not define American culture anymore than blackness defines if an individual has committed a crime. You confuse demographics and population-based studies with individual action and grossly generalize both. You use it to put down and dehumanize broad swaths of people.
My guess is somewhere you have values that expose how abhorrent and dangerous your statements are. Listen to those and try to change.
Nobody is accusing you personally, of racism. Most white people are absolutely not and treat everyone they meat with dignity and respect as they deserve based on human decency and our collective interaction.
My only humble argument on his behalf, is that I have never worried about being pulled over in my life. Never. I am always painfully courteous, prompt with requests and happy to make it an encounter that is as positive as my personality can make it. I don’t want trouble and I assume others do not as well.
I can’t imagine being a black male, who has the exact same attitude and philosophy on life, that is treated, in a subhuman way based on a perhaps a biological mistrust of differences and ensuring our own survival.
We are a tribalist and xenophobic species thanks to millions of years of evolution, but our combined humanity and intelligence have allowed us to make progress.
I applaud someone who sees an injustice and takes a stand. Especially when they have been fortunate and talented enough to earn a platform.
Arnold Shwarzeneggar, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, Sonny Bono, Fred Thompson, Tim Tebow, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Jesse Ventura, etc. Celebrity status…
Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is its own kind of indicator. Do you think a black man with normal hair and clothing, on his way to work in the morning like everyone else, worries about getting pulled over?
But if you’re dressed like a gangster and cruising around at 3 o’clock in the morning, sorry, but it looks like you’re up to something. Why should we deny our police officers the opportunity to use plain common sense?
It’s not tribalism or xenophobia. It’s “track record.”
You know what a drive-by shooting is, I’m sure. These are committed by gangsters. So whenever the first black gangster, in L.A. or wherever, decided this was a thing to do, he opened the door for police to start protecting us against these kind of random acts of violence. And when non-criminal blacks decided to start dressing and acting like their heroes in the rap music business, who also dress like gangsters, they opened the door for the police to start protecting us against them.
Whatever you might think, appearances are important. As a white man, if I cover myself in tattoos, get a mohawk, and start wearing a leather vest everywhere, it makes perfect sense that I would start getting questioned by the police on occasion – because I look like a criminal. I certainly don’t look like an employed, stable, law-abiding citizen.
But we can’t apply this same principle to blacks? We can, and we do.
What you have with modern blacks in the USA is a group who thinks they ought to be able to do anything, act any way they want, wear anything they want, be anywhere at any time they want, and not be questioned. EVEN THOUGH their track record indicates that they are probably up to no good.
So no, sorry, that doesn’t wash. And invariably, when these shootings occur, there’s always a sidebar that never gets mentioned in which the “victim” refuses to obey the police officer’s orders. They reach under the seat, they reach into their pockets, or into their crotch (apparently in black society, reaching into your crotch to grab your stuff for a while is just business as usual), they run away, or they just outright resist arrest.
Again, I don’t feel sympathy for these people. There’s a way to handle a traffic stop that’s 100% certain not to result in your death, and that is to be polite and do everything the officer tells you to do. In every single one of these police shootings, that is not the way the traffic stop went down. Stupid. And not worth a second thought from me.
Yes, black men and women of all economic standing and lifestyles worry about being pulled over. The profiling we see in America is based mostly on race alone, nothing else; the other forms of discrimination matter after an initial pull-over and often are used to justify an escalation by officers. It happens in broad daylight, not just early morning.
You exhibit a type of discrimination and justification that is rampant in law right now. Even your profiling of what is criminal ignores the fact that the ideals of justice and legal system fail to uphold. A person with tattoos and hoody shouldn’t worry about police presence unless they break the law. We should be held accountable for our actual criminal activity not the prejudice and short cuts citizens and law take to predict criminality. And the reality is men of color experience the greatest rate of those failures of justice because of the biases our country has against black Americans at the institutional level.
Studies support this reality. Unarmed black citizens are twice as likely to be fatally shot by officers than their white counterparts. And non-white citizens were actually found to not be attacking officers more often when fatally shot then white citizens. This is a disturbing trend that supports the countless personal stories of racial bias in policing that we have been hearing for a century or more.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1745-9133.12269/abstract
Well, I implicitly disagree with your opinion, Bike, and yes I did take a few minutes to read the study you linked. One of the first things I noticed is that all the information studied was supplied by the Washington Post, the most notorious liberal rag in the USA.
Still, I don’t disagree with the statistics. There is no question that blacks are more likely to be shot than whites, and probably more likely to be pulled over in the first place – goes back to track record.
But further study would almost certainly indicate that those blacks who were shot were shot for a reason, and that reason was most likely their failure to participate in a civilized traffic stop or a civilized round of questioning in a civilized manner. Give a cop some attitude and yeah, he’s going to be more cautious about how things proceed. Give a cop some attitude then reach under your seat or into your pocket? Well…
If you’re looking for people in favor of putting our police officers at risk of life and limb by curtailing their ability to respond to deadly threats, it’s not going to happen. Whatever the moral or “racist” implications of it may be, I am 100% in favor of police profiling. I live in a very quiet neighborhood, and one that is not prepared for a visit by criminals. If I’m sleeping peacefully in the wee hours of the morning, and there’s a car full of hoodlum-types cruising around my neighborhood, I WANT the police to pull them over and find out what they’re doing there. If they have a good reason to be there, and if they treat the police with the respect they deserve, and if they don’t do anything stupid upon being pulled over, they will have no problems whatsoever. If this is not the case, I don’t want that officer hamstrung by the law – unable to pull the vehicle over, unable to protect himself (and me) from whomever is inside it.
Honestly, Bike, it’s not a matter of bad laws or racist police. It’s a matter of a certain group of people refusing to modify their behavior. That’s what is costing black lives. If an innocent man gets shot by police, sure, I feel bad for the person and his family, no matter the color of his skin, and no matter what stupid thing he did to get himself shot.
But you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. In this case, the omelet is safe streets, and the eggs are those who refuse to cooperate with the police.
Racial profiling is illegal and violates the constitution and inherently racist. A group of people generically listed by race cannot have a track record. A person can and should only be arrested or investigated by police for any actual actions on their part. That is a fundamental tenet of our government and civil liberties. Curtailing those against one race group is not legal and should not be tolerated. Not only does it violate the equal protections clause of the Constitution it has also consistently been proven ineffective and actually counter productive.
It is a prime example of how racism continues to directly affect people of color and is expressly supported by individuals like you.
Common sense has to be our overriding legal paradigm, Bike.
Where does your path end? You say someone has to be violating the law to be arrested or investigated by police. So okay, what if a guy is walking into a bank with a mask over his head and a gun on his hip. Nothing illegal about that, right? It doesn’t become a crime until he points the gun at the teller and demands money. But should a police officer be required to wait for that to happen before he intercedes?
You use a lot of phrases like “it has been consistently proven” and “studies show” but I don’t see any proof or studies. In fact, out of all the people of color who have been “victims” of racial profiling, it’s a very safe bet to say that if the police hadn’t profiled some of them, they would have then proceeded to make a real victim out of someone. Where are the studies on that?
What you aren’t taking into account is, if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about from the police. I could be the blackest person on the planet, dressed in full gangster regalia, driving a “hoopty” through a rich neighborhood in the middle of the night. But if I’m not violating traffice laws, not carrying any drugs or firearms, if my driver’s license, registration and insurance are in order, and I cooperate fully with the police officer pulling me over without giving him an earful of bad attitude and defiance of the law, I am eventually going to be allowed to peacefully go about my business.
I don’t see a problem there. In fact, I’d like to see more profiling, and more traffic stops based on it. The better the chance that a criminal is going to get pulled over and caught out just for being out in public with his bad self, the better the chance he is going to find something else to do with his life besides being a hoodlum. If I have to tolerate the occasional unjustified traffic stop myself so that this can happen, I’m more than happy to make that sacrifice. It only costs a few minutes of my time.
The overwhelming legal paradigm is the Constitution each and every time. Profiling is unconstitutional and always will be without an amendment. You want to provide legal shortcuts to police black Americans for no reason other than they are black. They tried that in New York recently and it failed. They used stop and frisk in a way that was judged racially profiling and lost a court case. Their techniques were found unconstitutional and the NYPD was only allowed to continue stop and frisk if they changed their policy to protect everyone’s 4th and 5th amendment rights.
http://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/is-stop-and-frisk-unconstitutional/
Your bank analogy is flawed if trying to compare to racially profiling black Americans. Your example is of person engaging in activities that are rightfully judged as reasonable cause or provide reasonable suspicion for police to intercede. On the other hand, being born black isn’t a choice or behavior so “driving while black” doesn’t meet either of those criteria. Its racial profiling and unconstitutional. And wearing masks into banks is illegal in some states and even wearing them in public is even illegal in others (hence some of the charges against Antifa members).
You are asking me to prove a negative which is impossible and a fallacious charge. In fact, the analysis of the stop and frisk program in NY exposes the absurdity of your claim that “the police hadn’t profiled some of them, they would have then proceeded to make a real victim out of someone.”. The ACLU consistently found that only slightly more than 10% of those stopped in stop and frisk were breaking the law in any form. Even if all of those were black (they weren’t) then that figure would only equate to 65,000 guilty out of the 275,588 black citizens frisked in 2008. That would mean 77% of them are innocent which a clear sign of a program failure how wrong your racist conclusions truly are. Your conclusions and justifications are patently false and unAmerican and thankfully illegal.
https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data
I really hope you see what is happening in our little conversation here, Bike. You are trying to convince me that black people are being poorly treated. You are doing an excellent job of it, you’re concise, you know of what you speak, and you speak very eloquently.
But I’m not buying any of it.
And that’s the way it is now because you are forgetting one very important thing: We do NOT accept black culture, we find it ugly and mean, the very definition of “low society.” Blacks bring CRIME. If your statistics don’t lie, then neither do Law Enforcement’s statistics. Blacks ARE going to have to change, at a cultural level, if they want to stop being treated like…what they are.
Who is wrong here? The mostly-educated and employed race who simply want to live in a peaceful and prosperous society without a lot of problems? Or the problems themselves?
Your philosophy requires an incredible suspension of disbelief. You want us to hamstring ourselves so that we are no longer able to address the numerous and myriad problems blacks bring to their own communities and subsequently to ours. You want us to pretend none of this is real, that our police are lying to us, that our politicians are lying to us, that the only people telling the truth in this situation are the liberal elite newspaper magnates and the blacks themselves.
No. Wrong. We have a problem, and we are trying to deal with it. We may have to step into some gray Constitutional areas to do so. The Constitution was written for citizens of the USA. Well, in my opinion, until you have enough education to at least speak our language correctly, a job, some property, and something to lose, along with an attitude of trying to play well with your fellow citizens and a sense of civic responsibility, you are NOT a citizen of the USA. You are a problem. Whatever the law may say, there is no “spirit of inclusiveness” running rampant in the USA. Maybe a spirit of charity, but that is not the same thing.
Maybe we can turn blacks into proper citizens. Or maybe not. But it’s getting to the point that we have done all the nice things we can to make that happen. Now it’s time to apply a firm hand.
Have you considered the fact that we can’t have this conversation anywhere but here? I mean, YOU can have this conversation, because you are parroting the liberal media’s agenda. But not me. All of my comments would have been censored in the vast majority of publications. Whites are no longer allowed to speak the truth about racial problems, all we can do, if we want to be heard, is agree that whites are the problem. The entire conversation has literally been shut down by the mainstream media.
For this reason, if no other, whites have to remain steadfast in the face of this media onslaught, intended to rob us of our heritage. I for one do not want a country that caters to the lowest common denominator. Either we bring blacks up to our level, or let them deal with the consequences of non-participation. No more handouts, no more absurd justifications, no more ignoring the truth. None of this low behavior is okay. Get it together. Period.
I’m far from the only white person who feels this way. You know where this conversation does happen? On the golf courses. On the tennis courts. At the gym. By the pool. But NOT in the public discourse. It’s unfortunate that so many whites feel they can’t express their true feelings anymore. But we do express them in the voting booth.
We have a term for the ideas you condone….white supremacy. Your ideas are a minority but are finding more attention as actual organizations are trying to gain membership on such base, abhorrent and unconstitutional ideas. There is no grey area for equal protection in the constitution. Nor is there any question about the black Americans being American citizens. You deal in lies and hate in a completely irrational way that is untethered from reality. You don’t understand statistics or how they are used and try to misapply them to justify your prejudice and preference for illegal, violent policing.
What you just described about who and where there conversations happens actually just provided evidence to ideas about white privilege, racism and white supremacy that multiple contributors to the St George News website have tried to deny.
Your ideas, and their ancestors, have always lost out in the long run in US history. There are set backs but at the end of the day progress is made toward treating all people equal no matter their race, ethnicity or sex. At the end of the day that is why we have the Constitution and rigorously uphold its justice.
And you won’t even have your imaginary “Dixie” to hide in the years to come if you don’t change.
If a liberal agenda means supporting justice for all people than count me as a liberal. Your fear and lies never work for long.
ESPN has lost 3.2 million subscribers in the last year:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/vincentfrank/2015/07/12/losing-millions-of-subscribers-espn-now-facing-tough-decisions/#597b098f70cf
People go to ESPN to watch sports, not to be talked down to, not to be coddled by protecting us from being triggered by an Asian guy named Robert Lee, not to be preached to, but to watch sports.
Kaepernick is an idiot and a mediocre athlete that did something on the job that caused his employer a lot of grief. That’s why he’s unemployed now. End of sentence. It has nothing to do with courage, it has to do with virtue signaling.
What does ESPN have to do with the Kaepernick controversy?
Everything Chris. They peddle the nonsense of the extreme left, much like our friend Ed here, and they are now paying the price. They are a “sports” network that lost their way.
The object of football is WINNING not WHINING ! Nothing is more annoying than millionaire crybabies !
can we get a gofundme page to help Ed Kociela get down to the congo. If he pledges to stay at least a year I’ll chip in.
Ed, I can’t help wondering. If you truly hate America as much as it sounds like you do? Go try any of the BS you subscribe to and support in any of the socialist communist nations of your choosing. And see how far that will get you…
Colon has spoken, exercising his rights.
Football fans (& others) have spoken, exercising their rights.
The NFL owners and coaches have heard and decided that keeping fans and keeping a team are more important than Colon Kaepernick?
Our system is working. Everybody should be happy.
Next.
Kap is unemployed because he opted out of a contract after a terrible 2016 season where he had a passer rating of 55.2! Nobody in their right mind is going to sign him with. The NFL is a business, that’s why the other players disgracing the Nation in protest are still employed, receiving backlash, but still employed.
Very timely article on ESPN today. Seems the Ravens were on the verge of signing Kaepernick as a backup when is girlfriend, Abba Daba Dooba, posted a racist tweet about Ray Lewis and the owner which caused them to cancel the offer. Bottom line, the guy is more trouble than he is worth.
Republicans have done their part to abolish slavery and give voting rights to Blacks. Federal laws insured protection against discrimination. Affirmative action and welfare benefits have provided for Blacks at a great cost to working Americans. So what exactly is Kap protesting? Indian blacks are doing just fine. Fijian blacks have no issues. It’s just certain African blacks that seem to struggle with poverty, crime and embracing the role of victim.
Kap of all people seems to have benefitted from White parents who adopted him and educated him. He had a great opportunity to excel at football but he chose to rebel and blame others. His talent level proved less that expected or surely he would have a job. If protest was ever justified, perhaps another forum might have worked in his favor.
His protest was principally about the disproportionate police violence against black Americans, not the issues you highlight.
Maybe they shouldn’t commit a disproportionate amount of crime. I know, I’m a racist and so as are crime statistics.
Maybe they shouldn’t commit a disproportionate amount of crime. I know, I’m a racist and so as are crime statistics. It’s why speeders get a disproportionate amount of speeding tickets.
Speeders get tickets for speeding. Those who commit actual crimes should be dealt with legal consequences proportionate to their crime no matter their race. What he is protesting is the disproportionate rate at which black Americans are dealt with violently even when not attacking police or armed. That is an injustice and should be dealt with. Its supported by empirical studies:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/02/u-s-deportations-of-immigrants-reach-record-high-in-2013/
Crime statistics aren’t racist, they are snapshots of populations. Drawing conclusions about “blacks” because of those stats is racist or using population based statistics to racially profile individuals is also racist and illegal. Equality demands we treat individuals with dignity and respect no matter their race, ethnicity, gender or religion and the constitution prohibits any action that affects their equal treatment under the law.
You sound like the guy who wants TSA to strip search the 85 yr old granny instead of the skull capped black bearded guy who speaks like he is choking on flem. You do the granny to be PC and not be accused of profiling.
PC is a cop out. And your analogy holds to water. You don’t profile either. You scan them and then randomly check others through a truly randomized system. Unless something pops up in the body and/or luggage scan. Then you have probable cause to search more anyways.
Ironically, your logic is what leads to anybody that travels while looking Muslim to be searched and violated more. When people fail to understand statistics then they start to justify infringements on personal liberty and equal protection. But takes someone to clearly look like an “other” which is only defined by how they don’t appear like us or seem like us. In the last year we have seen this logic applied to black Americans, Latin Americans and Muslim Americans. See a trend? Interesting given the fact that white men engage in the highest levels of domestic terrorism. But we don’t profile white men because that is illegal. Imagine if white men went under the amount of scrutiny displayed on this forum every time they applied for a corporate job. We know they commit the most white collar crimes.
We don’t do that because we don’t project the behaviors of the minority of people who commit crimes onto the majority of innocent individuals who happen to fit certain demographics. We hold individuals accountable for their actual actions. We don’t engage in group punishment based upon race, gender or religion.
You’re sweet and idealistic. If we hold people accountable why isn’t Hillary in jail? El Al uses profiling extensively in passenger screening and has a better track record than any other country in the world.
Not interested in the Hillary debate, its not relevant. My accountability claim was to differentiate between racial profiling and actual individual criminal acts; they are legally different and have profound implications for personal liberty. I will say as a general theme the wealthy and powerful rarely deal with the same consequences as the middle class or below.
You won’t catch me willfully comparing us to our ally Israel. Plenty of accurate comparisons but our civil liberties are not one. El Al was previously state owned and its still recognized as a national airlines. Its safety record is strong but its measures that create that are not without noticeable concern. But that is beyond the scope of a thread about an NFL protest. Lets just say Israel’s civil protections are a lot more specific and noticeably limited in ways we could not imagine in the US.
Bottom line with Kaepernick is simple. Vast majority of Americans think he’s a jerk and he is paying the price.