You may not be aware that some family members served in the military and some are retired law enforcement. I was perfectly okay with Kaepernick kneeling for the National Anthem because, once I found out what his original cause was, I wanted a national spotlight on unwarranted police brutality. Social justice and racial equality are great f*cking causes! I was pleased that Nike stood by Kaepernick. I was pleased to find out that Colin had been a steady activist and philanthropist after being nixed from the NFL.
The Piggy Cops socks are not going over well.
It's great that a human being whose livelihood was to risk injury for the sake of entertainment was forcing a pause to consider the innocent black drivers. Let me be the one to say, if I get pulled over for a traffic violation, I want to get a warning or a ticket and then sent on my way. I do not want to involuntarily surrender my life or get sent to the ER, especially over something immutable like my skin color.
Once upon a time (400 years long), it was against the law for blacks to learn how to read and write. It was also against the law to teach them. We had no power to name our own children. We had no power to keep our own names. We had no choice as to whether we could keep our children. We didn't get to send our children to school because they were equated with working farm animals. We had no power to choose a vocation. We had no power to travel freely. We could not vote. We could not piss without permission. Northerners are not off the hook either. Northerners were compelled by law to return escaped slaves to their owners. During Jim Crow, literacy tests prevented blacks from registering to vote (no one was allowed to teach blacks how to read, so a literacy test was racist). It was all systematic. After emancipation (and that was written down, so southerners would have had to tell their slaves they were free, because blacks weren't allowed to read. I repeated that because you might be taking it for granted that blacks got the memo or heard the announcement on a radio. There was no radio back then). The Union Soldiers had to force the emancipation.
Then came the KKK. Law enforcement was typically staffed with Grand Wizards. A black household calling 9-1-1 may as well have made an appointment with the town executioner for his family's necks.
These evil racist cops today are holdovers from what used to be America's normal. So I was and am still proud of Colin Kaepernick for successfully getting our attention that these scumbags still have jobs in the public trust. I am happy he interrupted your entertainment and got the nation talking about something that was willfully ignored for decades. It sparked conversations that I NEVER WOULD HAVE HAD with people I've known for many years, as well as complete strangers. I respect that he gave Green Beret Nate Boyer his ear and took Boyer's advice to protest respectfully.
It's the unexpected horror of those damned socks. I won't condemn the Police Department at large, even though I've made my share of piggy and donut jokes. In addition to keeping out of the cops' way, I do have those retired Law Enforcement officers in my bloodline. And as my dear cousin has said, we just want to have the same confidence that white people take for granted: Law Enforcement will protect and serve all the residents of a community, even the black and brown ones.
Please take note that the horrors that Kaepernick originally protested happen to my people every day, in some places more regularly than others. Black achievement can't become commonplace if our nation's black men keep getting maximum sentences for minimum infractions.
In spite of the excesses of the organization, I still believe that Black Lives Matter, especially when I look in the mirror. To be honest, I take it for granted that my life matters, and then I hear about sh*t posted on Facebook.
Kaepernick's face or not, the message is universal - BELIEVE IN SOMETHING, EVEN IF IT MEAN SACRIFICING EVERYTHING.
Make someone else's day magical!
Mackenzie
#BlackLivesMatter
#AllLivesMatter
#Kaepernick
#Nike
#JustDoWhat
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