It has never been about a song

Slave trading block in
Fredricksburg, Virginia (1926)

A reply to “Choose Respect”

By Ed Rogers

The voices in the halls of Congress that cried out against slavery were drowned out by the sound of the slave auction outside. No discussion was to be had, you were for slavery or against it. The debate would go on until, at last, it started a war. The debate and the war changed nothing. Black men and black women were no longer called slaves, but they were treated no better than they had been.
    Every gain that black men and black women have made in this country has been fought against with the fury of a battle to the death. White entitlement stops any discussion about race before it begins. There can be no discussion with people who have the power to improve the situation but won’t admit that they’re wrong. To this day, there are people with barely a sixth-grade education who think they are smarter than Barack Obama because he is black. White Nazis march in our city streets and there is less fuss about that than about a football player taking a knee during a song. Our current President thinks there are good Nazis, but no good-intentioned black football players. You who think there should be discussions, please tell me how that one starts.

In 1968, at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City, two brave men took a stand knowing what it would cost them. Tommie Smith fought off all comers to win the gold in the 200-meter sprinting event, while John Carlos won the bronze.
    The same dissenting voices you hear today were heard back then. How dare they disrespect the flag that way. If they want to have a discussion about race, that is not the way to do it. And on and on, until the Olympic Commission was forced to strip Tommie Smith and John Carlos of their metals. The first and the third fastest men in the world had lost the thing they had worked for their entire life.
    And they didn’t take that stand for themselves. All they had to do was remain silent and do nothing and they would’ve had it made for life. They chose to lose it all to start the conversation that everyone talks about.

We move ahead to 2017, and another black athlete picks up the torch that Smith and Carlos lit. Colin Kaepernick was a quarterback who was going places in the NFL. He had it all, his hard work for all those years had paid off, his dreams had come true.
    So, do you think Kaepernick didn’t know what he stood to lose? I’m not sure he thought he would lose everything, but he should have remembered what happened to Smith and Carlos. The anger of white dissenters knows no bounds; once again, all they see is a black man being disrespectful. They don’t see the pain in his heart for the way people are treated who look like him – the mothers who cry over their dead sons or the children who go to bed hungry every night.

The national anthem belongs to the white race – it always has – so why do you demand that people of color bow down to it?
    For all you Christians out there, here is how I explain these men and their actions. Then the King will answer, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.”

Copyright © 2017 by Ed Rogers