Greek Life
HE Is Right. WE Are Right. YOU Are Wrong,…
Article #40: Greek Life, Police, Race Relations, Sports
There comes a time in a person’s life where they’ve had enough. Whether it’s being financially unstable or being in an unstable and unhealthy relationship, it’s a point that one reaches where a fork in the road comes and they take the road marked ‘Exit.’
Colin Kaepernick finally reached his fork in the road.
If you didn’t know who Colin Kaepernick was, you probably do now.
He’s a member of Kappa Alpha Psi® Fraternity, Inc.; one of the 5 historically Black Greek-letter fraternities within the National Pan-Hellenic Council, and a professional athlete who plays for a team within one of the four primary sports leagues in America: The NFL®.
This league is so gargantuan in America that its flagship championship game is the 4th largest sporting event ever watched in world history.
The National Football League, the league’s official name, has so much power and wealth that it even fought off facts of what 200 lb – 400 lb men colliding with one another at great speeds and with devastating force did and does to its players, particular their brains. They even made a movie about it.
The NFL®, in essence, did the same thing that the tobacco industry did when it came to what tobacco did and does to its customers.
Deny, deny, deny.
With that level of influence and prestige held by the league, it makes me smile even more that such a prominent Black Greek-letter organization member and athlete (a quarterback nonetheless) of a team in the third largest state in the country would risk his career, his money, and his fame in order to use his mega-platform to speak out about injustices being done to his fellow Americans.
One game day, Mr. Kaepernick decided that he’d had enough of seeing the injustices done to people of color across the country, and with virtually no repercussions to the culprits.
So, in an act of protest, on the sideline of the field he decided to do his own version of Rosa Parks’ famed act of resistance on the bus and not stand.
Only this time, it was Kaepernick not standing while the national anthem of the United States of America was being played.
HE did a simple, yet powerful protest, and for a righteous reason:
That is courage. That is selflessness. And that is un-apologetically American.
HE did that. HE owned that. And HE is right about that, period.
Bravo, Mr. Kaepernick, bravo.
Unfortunately, as we’ve seen countless times in countless situations regarding individuals speaking out about injustice, there are always the individuals who don’t suffer these injustices who come out from under their societal safety blankets to tell the fed-up oppressed, “Keep your voices down! I’m trying to enjoy my privilege over here! Stop being un-American.“
Well, with them, I have reached my exit, and I have some quintessential Americanism for them.
Here is where the cordial words and the ‘King’s language’ ends and an open letter to the individual idiots who find themselves mentally stuck in the 1700s and can’t bring themselves to see what’s right in front of them begins.
Forgive the hyperbolic writing and angry language…or not. I could care less. Thank you.
DEAR UNPATRIOTIC IMBECILES:
1.) You DO understand that one of the driving forces in America is F-R-E-E-D-O-M, right?
2.) You DO understand that F-R-E-E-D-O-M allows you to make the CHOICE to NOT stand if you don’t want to, right?
3.) You DO understand that the entire country didn’t start thinking that they were supposed to put their hands over their hearts during the anthem until Ronald Reagan, which was less than 40 freakin’ years ago, right?
Sooooooooo, for the other 200+ years, or however long the got dang song has been in existence before then, was everyone else being “disrespectful” for not putting their hand over their heart?
OHHHH! It’s the STANDING gesture now, huh? No, I thought it was the salute? Wait, wait. I forgot! WE CAN CHOOSE TO DO NEITHER!!
HE chose to sit down in protest, and the Constitution of the United States of America gives him that right to choose to do so.
That’s what America is about, you neanderthals. F-R-E-E-D-O-M! And for you to not only seemingly not understand that, but to also worry more about #7’s seating position instead of why HE‘s seated, shows your freakin’ privilege.
Oh, and I meant to ask you:
Where is your outrage over the other dozens upon dozens of people in this photo who don’t have their hands over their hearts while the U.S. national anthem is playing?
Ohhhhhhh no!
YOU attacked Olympic legend Gabriel Douglas when she stood at attention, just like these gentlemen in the photo above, during the national anthem at the Olympic games and did not put her hand over her heart, just like these gentlemen in the photo above, so I KNOOOOOOOOOOW you’re going to do the PC outrage thing on them, too, right?
With that being said, I need a schedule of when you’re going to post your outrage about these other gentlemen.
I want to make sure I have my computer-side seats and my popcorn, like Michael Jackson watching that movie in his Thriller video.
Oh. So you DON’T have a schedule where you plan on being consistent across the board with your outrage? Yeah, I figured as much.
See what happens when you do selective, faux outrage? You look really stupid when called on your hypocrisy.
So, to all of you un-patriotic imbeciles, I need you to understand something very important:
WE no longer care what you think about our choices. WE are fed up with the constant injustices being done to people of color in America and WE are not taking it or letting it go anymore.
WE realize and accept that you aren’t in the American fight with us because you’re too busy benefiting from your privilege and haven’t come up for air in order to smell the rottenness that has risen up from the core of this never ‘great’ country.
Yeah, I said NEVER ‘GREAT.’
• How are you going to be GREAT with slavery?
• How are you going to be GREAT with state-sponsored racism?
• How are you going to be GREAT when dang-near half your population is bigoted and doesn’t even realize it because it’s so natural to them?
YOU are Ok with us entertaining you, but not Ok with us espousing the very principles on which this country was said to be founded (liberty, equality in the pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of the press, etc.), but actually wasn’t actually founded on them because racism was put directly into the founding document of this country. Literally.
Oh the irony…and your willful blindness.
YOU are like a wife abuser who doesn’t see anything wrong with life. You have a wife who cooks, cleans, does anything you say, but you beat the hell out of her whenever you feel like it.
Of course YOUR life is cool, but what about hers? YOU are not paying any attention to her pain.
Why not?
Because it’s easier and more beneficial to you for you to do the same thing that both the tobacco industry did regarding the massive negative health effects of its products on humans and the NFL® did to its players regarding the devastating effects of repeated blunt force head trauma.
Deny, deny, deny.
She lives her life in constant fear and terror. Sadly, when she tries to tell you that things are actually bad for her, you lash out at her and try to tell her how good she has it because you keep a roof over her head and buy the food that she cooks for you.
You tell her to shut up and be grateful that you’re letting her stay there with you and that she should be happy that you care enough to abuse her.
See how absolutely asinine that sounds?
Of course YOU don’t. That would mean that YOU stepped out of your privilege for a moment and decided to see from the abused point of view instead of the abuser’s point of view from which you’ve been looking your whole life, but maybe not even realizing it, and we know YOU are not going to do that, right?
Protesting is a quintessential piece of the American fabric, but somehow to YOU it’s un-American? That’s because YOU have NO CLUE what being an oppressed American is or for what America truly stands.
Why not?
It’s because YOU have been doing nothing but benefiting from everything else for which everyone else has taken massive, negative hits.
YOU are too busy walking down the street not worrying about being killed by police, not worrying about whether or not people think you’re a killer, a thief, or some other type of violent or even non-violent ‘criminal.’ And, unfortunately, YOU think that’s everyone’s experience.
It is not.
Until YOU pull your nose up out of your behind and start smelling something other than your own stool (which you obviously think does not have an unpleasant scent to it), you’ll never see what America’s minorities, but the world’s majority, has been trying to tell and clearly show you for decades.
America is a racist country because it’s policies are discriminatory and virtually half its population are either racists or bigots.
Swallow this truth whole and maybe we can finally pass this racism through that dark, funky colon of yours, finally put it behind us, and flush it away forever.
Until then, do like Mr. Kaepernick and have several seats, but for a totally different reason.
I think this is where I drop the mic.
