Tuesday, October 03, 2017

It seems Blacks athletes have forgotten their place

Dear black people;

I guess we have messed up again. It seems like we are never going to learn how to properly protest no matter how hard white people try to teach us, we will never learn.

When there was violence in the streets over the unpunished police killing of black men, they said that was the wrong way to go about it. The only right way to go about is the white man's way.

But, when peaceful street demonstrations took place, whites didn't like that either. NFL player Colin Kaepernick, my hero, hit on the idea of sitting through the national anthem.

But whites said that was disrespectful to veterans, so My Hero Kaepernick started taking a knee instead. Many others following suit.

Whites said that was still wrong and my hero Kaepernick has found himself blacklisted or blackballed.

Then came this Donald Trump who took time out from comparing missiles with Kim Jong In and ignoring Puerto Rico to declare that the athlete who takes a knee is a son of a bitch and should be fired for disrespecting America and the bloody flag. The Trump was harder on the athletes than on the neo-Nazis and the white supremacist, who marched in Charlottesville.

Meantime some observers, including television personality Geraldo Rivera, have gripped that politics has no place in sports. Whites made similar arguments about comic books when Marvel unveiled a black Spider-Man and about Beyoncé performed formation at the super bowl.

I though politics was woven into all forms of human expression. I would have sworn it's been a part of sports since at least 1910 Jack Johnson knocked out a white man, one named Jim Jeffries and white people across America rioted in outrage. I thought it had been part of comics since at least 1941, when Captain America decked Adolf Hitler, and of music since at least 1939, when Billie Holiday sang Strange Fruit.

My hero Colin Kaepernick represents the fight against police brutality, police crimes, and racism, racist discrimination in many ways. Thank you, my hero, Colin Kaepernick.
Rev Edward Pinkney