So let me get this straight…. if a player takes a knee during the national anthem his team is assessed a 15 yard penalty before the game even starts?? That is easily the dumbest rule ever passed in the NFL and the owners should be ashamed of themselves.
A sport that has been nearly 70% black since the 1970 merger doesn’t care of the plight of it’s players or what they see in their communities. Nor what they experience. What started out with Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality is growing into a watershed moment that hasn’t come to a head yet. He and his teammate S Eric Reid are both unsigned and taking the NFL to court on collusion charges.
Everyday on social media is another post of law enforcement beating, tasing, killing and outright harassing my people at an alarming rate. These racist gestapo tactics have been known in the black community for years, it’s just being recorded for all of America to see. Yet many in white America want to turn a blind eye and make (the protest) seem disrespectful to our military or to our country and defend law enforcement while hiding behind a veil of white privilege.
Why do they kneel?? Go ask a black friend of their experiences with law enforcement.
When it comes to the law enforcement community it has been overtly racist for years in the difference between how blacks are treated vs white. Ironically every one of the altercations you see daily on Facebook and Twitter are unarmed black men being assaulted by 4 or 5 cops every time. Over a tail light… or leaves on their car window or golfing too slow. Yet not one white armed mass shooter has been taken into custody roughed up. Why not?? You’re judge jury and executioner whenever someone black has a tail light out.
When the officer who shot and killed Philando Castille was acquitted Kaepernick was in the spotlight again on police reform when he tweeted:
harkening back to a not to distant past how law enforcement tactics in the U.S. and their treatment of blacks was borne of the old slave patrols. Yet through the years many law enforcement agents were in the KKK. How do we know this?? Fifty years ago J.B. Stoner, Grand Wizard of the KKK, told Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad cryptically ““In the future we would not wear the white robe, or the white hooded sheets, but we will be in the police department, we will be in politics, we will be in the courts”
In the documentary “OJ Made In America” during the 1st part they offered:
In 2006 PBS had a special on the FBI as they warned white supremacists had infiltrated all of local law enforcement. Its purpose is to disrupt investigations against their members and to recruit new members. With all of this going on people still want to turn a blind eye to all these racist tactics that go against the freedom we profess to have in the United States. Well unless if you’re black and want to exercise your 1st amendment right and peacefully protest at the beginning of a football game.
In the future when we look back at these tumultuous times we will remember Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid as heroes. They are having to sacrifice the same as Tommie Smith and John Carlos did after their 1968 Olympic protests. In 1964 when the AFL’s black all stars decided to boycott the game in New Orleans and caused the game to be moved to Jeppeson Stadium in Houston. Forgotten is the fact KC Chief RB Abner Haynes & RB Cookie Gilchrist were blackballed after being traded from their teams in the aftermath. In 50 years….nothing has changed.
Malcolm X once opined “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Not here at Taylor Blitz Times… never in a million years. All these owners took a weak way out and got Eagles S Malcolm Jenkins to sell out his brothers to try to quell the protest. Its why Reid and several prominent players walked away from the coalition.
The owners decided to offer money to several charities black players cared about as more hush money than anything else. Now they should have stood by their players causes and they didn’t. Just as nefarious as the concussion settlement of $865 million dollars, its a p.r. move as families of former players have had to fight tooth and nail with their claims. Where the owners could have shed their privilege and used their power to influence societal change. They chose to uphold the status quo.
The best thing all black NFL players should do is all protest and take a knee together at the beginning of this next season. To be forced to stand at the National Anthem seems patriotic until you look up and vendors are still selling concessions while it’s being played. Fans are still walking around the mezzanine so it’s never been about patriotism. Its just a white privilege pivot to not pay attention to these racial atrocities taking place on American streets. If this is the land of the free we’ll find that out when Reid and Kaepernick have their day in court.
Until then lets all take a knee in solidarity.
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Postscript: 3, December 2019: Last August, the Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted Kansas City Chiefs great FS Johnny Robinson (finally) for his contributions to pro football back in the American Football League. An honor long overdue and ironically every time Chris would interact and talk about great players of the past, not one conversation would go by without mention that Robinson belonged in Canton. Not one.
Congratulations Johnny Robinson on your Hall of Fame Induction!! Taylor Blitz Times salutes you.
To the casual football fan, the legacy of the Buffalo Bills is that of a four time Super Bowl participant that lost them consecutively, or OJ Simpson and what later became of his life with a double murder trial. Yet a further look into the legacy of MY beloved Buffalo Bills and you’ll find out about Robert Kalsu: The only professional football player to give his life serving his country in the Vietnam War. You will also find that in the AFL, the Buffalo Bills came within a game of becoming a THREE-PEAT champion…and one of the most powerful champions in history.
Well when you think of the AFL you think of wide open offenses and high scoring football games. It was the wild west up until this defensive mountain rose up to stop the onslaught of points. It happened in Buffalo. Joe Collier developed a 4-3 defense that took advantage of cocking defensive end Tom Day #88 in the gap between the center and guard. This was later made famous by Joe Greene and the Pittsburgh Steelers a decade later….yet I digress
Lets take a look at the tale of the tape:
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