It is as if you are whipping us all over again. And the ultimate manifestation of denigration and disrespect is to be enriched and entertained by our skills on a plantation or football field and not empathize with our blood being spilled inhumanely and unjustly on the streets. His poem unearths the essence of who we are as a people by and beyond the color of our skin. ![]() And when police brutality and murder is tolerated and exonerated through the justice system and ratified by the silence of white Americans, it demands our most vehement and vociferous protest. Some say that was so long ago and we should get over it, but the reverberations of history yet enslave black Americans economically, educationally and environmentally. And evidently it's hard for whites to empathize with that reality. But for black Americans the context of that history was chains and slavery. ![]() How dare he disrespect the American flag and the national anthem? For many white Americans the flag and the anthem represent a proud history of blood, sweat and tears that won this country's independence from the king and enabled our own democracy. ![]() No one was taking a stand, so Colin took a knee.Īnd then came the fire and the fury of white nationalism. All of a sudden an ethos of ambivalence about black lives was intimated and realized among every class of African Americans. The verdict of not guilty was almost as gut wrenching as the deafening silence of white government officials, business leaders and faith leaders. And not long after we heard and saw video footage of that brutality, we heard not-guilty verdicts. All across the country we constantly heard about the brutality and gunshots that brazenly took the lives of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling and Freddie Gray. ![]() Colin Kaepernick took a knee at the singing of our national anthem last year because his conscience would not allow him to ignore the injustices exacted on unarmed black men at the hands of American law enforcement.
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