Colin Kaepernick refuses “to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people”...
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Bet the University is gonna make him walk back his comments so they don't lose recruits.
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http://thegrio.com/2016/09/14/dabo-swinney-mlk-clemson-professor/Take MLK’s name out your mouth: An open letter to Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney
Dear Coach Swinney,
I’m a professor at Clemson. We’ve never met, but we work with many of the same students.
I listened to your comments on the issue of athlete protests on the field and I wanted to share some of my impressions.
I winced when I heard a reporter ask you, a white man who makes somewhere in the area of $5 million a year from the physical labor and ? risk of unpaid black athletes, if he would “discipline” them for making a political statement. Given that you and I both work on the former plantation of John C. Calhoun, the historical significance of the question is staggering and troubling.
To your credit, you said that you would not discipline a player for not standing during the national anthem, an act of defiance most recently started by 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
You did acknowledge Kaepernick’s right to protest and you encouraged other players to exercise those rights if they want to. I was glad to hear all of those things. For a moment, I felt even prouder than I already am to be a professor at Clemson.
But then you started talking about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Coach Swinney, I really wish you hadn’t done that.
First let me say that I understand why you did this. Your statements reproduce a long history of folks, conservative and otherwise, positioning Dr. King as the palatable Christian alternative to unruly black protest.
What better way to silence the profit threatening specter of black athlete protest, than by offering the image of a civil rights activist who protested in a way that was more “professional” and “convenient” for everyone?
There’s only one problem. There was nothing convenient or palatable about Dr. King.
In his speech to the SCLC board in 1967 King argued that “The evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and evils of racism.” He brought the civil rights struggle to the most public platforms at the most inconvenient times.
You did get one thing right about Dr. King when you mentioned, “he changed the world through education in the face of ignorance.”
On the topic of education, I wonder if you have ever read Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It’s okay if you haven’t. Dr. King wrote many things and it’s challenging to read them all. Although this letter was widely circulated in the 1960s, I find that less and less people are familiar with it today.
Perhaps after reading it, you’ll work with me to change that.
Like today’s protesters, Dr. King faced critics who claimed that they agreed with his ultimate aim of justice, but simply disagreed with his methods. They said that they agreed– as you do – that citizens have the right to protest, but they felt that there was an appropriate time and place for it. Your statements encouraged athletes to keep their protest off the field. Dr. King’s critics didn’t say that his methods were “wrong.”
Instead, in the letter, Dr. King reminds us that his critics called his tactics “unwise and untimely.”
Dr. King began his response by reminding his critics of why he was in Birmingham. He said, “I’m here because there is injustice here.”
Coach, you may be thinking that Dr. King was in Birmingham in 1963 and here we are at Clemson, South Carolina in 2016. You would be right to point out that our circumstances are very much different.
However, it may also be possible that your position as a well paid and celebrated white coach, has shielded you from some of the injustices that persist here and now.
The fact that our state leads the nation in women killed by their domestic partners is injustice. It is injustice that Clemson students, including most athletes, will face a post-job economy with record poverty and unemployment. The criminalization of the mentally ill and the exploitation of prison laborers in our state is injustice. The deaths of people like Walter Scott, Joyce Curnell, Ernest Smalley Jr., and Zachary Hammond at the hands of police officers were injustices.
The lack of answers and accountability about the death of Clemson student Tucker Hipps is an ongoing injustice. I could go on, but you get the point.
And there are also opportunities for change at our own university.
I want the best for our students that are also working athletes. But when I heard that we were building a $55 million dollar facility that won’t be available to most students, I couldn’t help but wonder how many other challenges at our university could be solved with $55 or even $30 million.
The insecure working conditions and low pay of our dedicated and excellent custodial, food service, and administrative staff is injustice. They work relentlessly everyday, with a positive attitude running this university. But they also suffer a variety of ongoing problems and challenges. -
The abysmally low levels of recruitment and especially retention of students and faculty of color at Clemson is injustice. In truth, the low recruitment of people of all ethnicities from the poorest parts of our state is injustice. The treatment of Clemson’s vulnerable international graduate students is injustice. The lack of a day care center is injustice. The fact that our most recognizable building bears the name of the white supremacist terrorist Ben Tillman is injustice. It is injustice when students protest these conditions and they are arrested, their reputations tarnished, and their careers threatened.
In the face of the injustices in his own time, Dr. King called for direct action, not press conferences.
He and those that fought with him brought the struggle to buses, games, counters, workplaces, and other places that were deeply inconvenient and often illegal. Dr. King points out that none of these direct action efforts was “well timed” in the eyes of his vocally supportive but privileged and paternalistic critics.
Coach Swinney, based on your statements, I think that maybe you would not have liked Dr. King if you had known him.
Dr. King worked closely with Jackie Robinson whose presence and success on the field was a protest. But his relationship with Dr. King became closer when he rejected the idea that his individual success was enough and that he should only engage with docile forms of protest that didn’t inconvenience anybody.
Dr. King also came to be friends with Muhammad Ali who used his platform in the most confrontational ways to stand up against the Vietnam War. When people criticized Dr. King’s own stance against the war he quoted Ali saying, “Like Muhammad Ali puts it, we are all—black and brown and poor—victims of the same system of oppression.”
As Dave Zirin reminded us in an article in The Nation, the two men also appeared together at a fair-housing rally in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.
You mentioned that you felt that Colin Kaepernick’s protest was divisive. Dr. King’s critics also called for unity and claimed that protesters in Birmingham were raising tensions.
Dr. King reminded these critics that “Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with.”
People who are fighting for civil rights are tired of hearing that we’re divisive. And we’re tired of calls for unity that are really calls for silence, and accommodation. Rather than accepting the false and deceptive claim that our tactics are working against unity, I would ask you instead: What terms of unity would you have us accept?
One particularly confusing part of Dr. King’s letter for you to read might be the section where he talks about his disappointment in what he calls the “The ? ’s great stumbling block.”
Coach Swinney, I know that you are not racist and that you probably hate the Ku Klux ? . I’m also not a fan. However, in the letter, Dr. King writes that he had come to feel that the ? was not the greatest obstacle to the advancement of black people. Instead, he discusses his disappointment in “the white moderate.”
I’m not sure if you would describe yourself as a white moderate, but you ended your speech by saying that you thought “Kaepernick’s intention was good” but his “method was not.”
Dr. King describes the white moderate as someone who says “”I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the ? to wait for a “more convenient season.” In short he describes the white moderate as someone who is “more concerned with “order than justice.”
Does any of this sound familiar?
I think the most important and most challenging part of the letter for you to read is Dr. King’s comments on the church. Like you, Coach Swinney, Dr. King made his case on religious grounds. Only Dr. King arrived at different conclusions than you did.
To quote him, “There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”‘
It seems unlikely to me that Dr. King would encourage you to baptize student athletes on the field and then encourage them not to stand for what they believe in – on the field. Dr. King’s interpretation of his religion inspired him to challenge, rather than acquiesce to people in power or profit in the face of injustice.
If after reading the letter, you find that you disagree with Dr. King on these matters, I think that’s fine. I actually think it can be a refreshing and important part of education to clarify your values.
If you do find that you disagree with Dr. King, as your comments indicate, please spare us the continued the distortion of his legacy.
Sincerely,
Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika
Department of Communication
Clemson University -
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Yo SAS said the US paid the NFL to have players stand to promote patriotism during the national anthem to increase military enlistment. That explains why they do that honoring of military. SAS actually been on some real ? without Skip. Anyone got anymore info on this situation? That's another issue with this country spending billions to promote military instead of healthcare, jobs and other benefits.
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They just played the audio of that Dabo ? and in these articles they seem to be leaving out they he dropped "these ppl need to move to another country" comment
That awkward one clap after he said "these people need to move" had me Rofl... -
This ? Stephen A. Smith trying hard as ? to get back into fold with his fellow black people.
He been doing some good work but ? ain't that easy after all the ? this ? has said and pulled. -
Is it possible that a ? can uncoon himself?
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Right lol
This ? Stephen A. Smith trying hard as ? to get back into fold with his fellow black people.
He been doing some good work but ? ain't that easy after all the ? this ? has said and pulled. -
T. Sanford wrote: »Is it possible that a ? can uncoon himself?
sounds like a potential thread to me -
? Dabo.
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T. Sanford wrote: »Is it possible that a ? can uncoon himself?
This is hilarious! Great post -
NothingButTheTruth wrote: »SMH at people trying to turn this into some kind of fad. Standing and holding hands, or even sitting is easy as ? . Someone tell these athletes to put their money and influence to work and develop a non profit organization to ACT against systemic oppression against black people.
The issue at hand is the systemic oppression of black people, not how we're going to decide to (fake) protest today. FOH!
Why would you embarrass yourself like this?? -
stringer bell wrote: »On His & Hers Michael Smith was talking about Dabo's comments and said "Same ? different day" lol...
I wish ESPN would try to reprimand him... -
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I find it funny that there was a Petition for Texas to succeed from the US in June, The Confederate States did succeed from theUS, and people laud the Confederacy......
yet get mad at a Black Man for Not saluting the same flag you shot down, killed men over and just as recent as thus year wantes to succeed from, disrespected its President.
Again its only a problem when Blacks don't just do what you want them to.
Watching that Ventura video really has me looking at this country becoming like ? Germany with it's forced Patriotism, false ideals. Everything we have are taught is rooted in evil and lies from a grade school level. Building walls and ? . History dors repeat itself.
They are following the ? blueprint.
They can say whatever they want about ? Germany or north Korea. They wish they could pump out that kind of propaganda and have damn near everyone follow it. -
En-Fuego22 wrote: »Generation after Generation we're in the same position nothing ever change but the weather for us, whether it's africa, north or south america.
What is it going to take for us to get of the ? because all this other ? hasn't worked.
How are we going to progress? We been praying, we protest peacefully and no result.
Athlete stand up and lose sponsor now what?
You seem to be whining and asking a lot of questions that you YOURSELF could be working on solving
But you'd rather complain about how other people choose to react to oppression -
http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-la-russa-colin-kaepernick-motive-2016-9Former MLB manager Tony La Russa says he doubts Colin Kaepernick's sincerity in protesting the national anthem
Colin Kaepernick's protest of the national anthem has generated a lot of comments on both the manner in which he has protested and the reason behind the protest. However, until now, few people in the sports world have have questioned his motives.
Enter former Major League Baseball Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa.
La Russa, who managed in the Bay Area with the Oakland Athletics, was a guest on ESPN's "The Dan Le Batard Show" and was asked about anthem protests and recent comments made by Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles. Jones recently noted that protesting the anthem is more difficult in MLB because "it's a white man's sport."
La Russa disputed that claim by Jones and then quickly veered on to the subject of Kaepernick and his protest. La Russa started by saying he would not allow a player on his team to protest the anthem.
Then, unprovoked, La Russa said he doubts Kaepernick's sincerity and wonders what the real motivation is.
"I really distrust Kaepernick's sincerity," La Russa told Dan Le Batard. "I was there in the Bay Area when he first was a star, a real star. I never once saw him do anything but promote himself."
La Russa then appeared to suggest that Kaepernick's status on the 49ers could be the motivation for the protest.
"All of a sudden now, he's a second-stringer, and he's got this mission," said La Russa. "I just don't trust his sincerity."
It is worth noting that Kaepernick's public interest in social injustice appeared to begin nearly a year before he started protesting the anthem.
La Russa went on to say that "even if he was sincere," that there are ways to get the point across "without disrespecting the country you live in and the flag." -
VulcanRaven wrote: »Yo SAS said the US paid the NFL to have players stand to promote patriotism during the national anthem to increase military enlistment. That explains why they do that honoring of military. SAS actually been on some real ? without Skip. Anyone got anymore info on this situation? That's another issue with this country spending billions to promote military instead of healthcare, jobs and other benefits.
That information came out actually sometime in the summer. I heard it mentioned a couple times but this is the 1st I've heard it mentioned in reference to the current players protesting. But there were some people upset w/ the NFL over this -
stringer bell wrote: »http://www.businessinsider.com/tony-la-russa-colin-kaepernick-motive-2016-9Former MLB manager Tony La Russa says he doubts Colin Kaepernick's sincerity in protesting the national anthem
Colin Kaepernick's protest of the national anthem has generated a lot of comments on both the manner in which he has protested and the reason behind the protest. However, until now, few people in the sports world have have questioned his motives.
Enter former Major League Baseball Hall of Fame manager Tony La Russa.
La Russa, who managed in the Bay Area with the Oakland Athletics, was a guest on ESPN's "The Dan Le Batard Show" and was asked about anthem protests and recent comments made by Adam Jones of the Baltimore Orioles. Jones recently noted that protesting the anthem is more difficult in MLB because "it's a white man's sport."
La Russa disputed that claim by Jones and then quickly veered on to the subject of Kaepernick and his protest. La Russa started by saying he would not allow a player on his team to protest the anthem.
Then, unprovoked, La Russa said he doubts Kaepernick's sincerity and wonders what the real motivation is.
"I really distrust Kaepernick's sincerity," La Russa told Dan Le Batard. "I was there in the Bay Area when he first was a star, a real star. I never once saw him do anything but promote himself."
La Russa then appeared to suggest that Kaepernick's status on the 49ers could be the motivation for the protest.
"All of a sudden now, he's a second-stringer, and he's got this mission," said La Russa. "I just don't trust his sincerity."
It is worth noting that Kaepernick's public interest in social injustice appeared to begin nearly a year before he started protesting the anthem.
La Russa went on to say that "even if he was sincere," that there are ways to get the point across "without disrespecting the country you live in and the flag."
Yo I was listening to the Lebatard show live when he said that. Dan's face was hilarious.
Dan also got the clapper to call in. -
VulcanRaven wrote: »Yo SAS said the US paid the NFL to have players stand to promote patriotism during the national anthem to increase military enlistment. That explains why they do that honoring of military. SAS actually been on some real ? without Skip. Anyone got anymore info on this situation? That's another issue with this country spending billions to promote military instead of healthcare, jobs and other benefits.
That information came out actually sometime in the summer. I heard it mentioned a couple times but this is the 1st I've heard it mentioned in reference to the current players protesting. But there were some people upset w/ the NFL over this
The original post didn't have the mod trying to move on with the quickness! -
T. Sanford wrote: »Is it possible that a ? can uncoon himself?
Define ? . I nominate the following as ? who uncooned themselves lol:
David Banner?
Malcolm X? -
stringer bell wrote: »On His & Hers Michael Smith was talking about Dabo's comments and said "Same ? different day" lol...
lol this is the second time he said ? on national tv
I hope ESPN don't punish him. Michael Smith is a real one but he gotta be more careful -
After San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem as a form of protest that he said was motivated by police brutality and racial injustice, the rapper — whose real name is Joseph Cartagena — said it was disrespectful to the military.
“Having thout about it, I ain’t with protesting the #NationalAnthem,” he tweeted. “Soldiers died fighting 4 our freedom not cops. Why disrepsected them?”
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/12/fat-joe-eviscerates-colin-kaepernick-soliders-died-fighting-for-our-freedom/#ixzz4KGb6JnFc -
when they brought up that "2 wrongs dont make a right argument" by the coach that ? always kills me
yea 2 wrongs dont make a right tell that to the people (racist whites/cops) who keep committing their 'wrongs' that cause these reactions and protests to begin with.
Where were they when unarmed blacks were getting killed? They wait til Kaepernick sits to start talking about right and wrong. These mfs feelings get hurt when Kaep wants to sit but nobody gives a ? when innocent/unarmed citizens are getting killed
All these people criticizing Kaep publically are using the same recycled, ignorant responses living in their little bubble. If they werent out there speaking against police getting away with murder dont be out there speaking against Kaep
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB3FeqvSmeA
