Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Protests express freedom, connect to the past
During the height of the Vietnam War, U.S. citizens, especially Caucasian college students, pushed back against American involvement in the Second Indochina War.
Protests included sit ins, flag burning, destruction of draft cards, desertion, draft dodging and acts of violence. Anti-war efforts combined with a black civil rights movement produced a litany of complaints against numerous U.S. policies abroad and at home.
Anti-war supporters accused U.S. leaders of delivering death sentences to military men and women for a war without purpose.
Opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War affirmed an individual’s right to peaceful protest, challenging a nation which professed high moral standards regarding humanity but not living up to idealistic claims of life, liberty and pursuits of happiness.
Officially, the Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File of the Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS) recorded 58,000 U.S. citizens killed in the conflict.
Soldiers returning home faced hatred and shame while being vilified as losers, as if war somehow represented a football game.
Nationalism, patriotism and the National Football League endured a head-on collision this football season as players, coaches and others delivered onfield protests during the playing of our country’s national anthem.
Players knelt, locked arms, and some raised clenched fists, a throwback, old-school gesture that resurrected the 1968 Olympics scene of U.S. African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos, black, beautiful and bold.
National Football League players who took knees during the playing of the national anthem exercised their right to peaceful protest, essentially paid homage to all military men and women who served this nation.
Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins made his expression with a raised, clenched fist. Jenkins ended his public protest in early December as reported by Matt Lombardo of NJ Advance Media.
“The purpose was to draw awareness to the issues that plague people of color, and the disenfranchisement of our communities, police brutality, the gap in our education system, the way our criminal justice system devours black-bodies,” Lombardo wrote.
A Caucasian colleague joined a national white chorus, including President Donald Trump, in identifying these protests as “disrespectful”, egregious behavior by black men who should be worry-free and happy about playing football for millions in mad money.
Observers looked at Malcolm Jenkins or Colin Kaepernick and envisioned Nat Turner, angry, rebellious, unappreciative, aggressive and hungry for an honest distribution of equality, freedom and equal opportunity.
If a person owns freedom, and fails to use that gift then those people exercise disrespect for this country which remains chained to racial disharmony.
An ease exists in loving this country when the playing field has always tipped in your favor, when skin color gains a person access, opportunity and all social rites of passage.
Most U.S. Caucasians have no idea the value of their epidermis, a leeway that offers instantaneous chances for success.
So, a black football player kneeling, sitting or raising a fist during the national anthem represents disrespect mainly for white people madly in love with a country that almost always delivers social, economic and political advantages for them, those people willing to look away from this nation’s despicable past of wrong decisions followed by attempts to repair bad judgements. This country brainwashes people to forget past failures and to deny present abuses. The key remains not going down that road of slavery, war, gender bias and social injustice. Progress and good decisions requires that famous carpenter’s rule to measure twice and cut once.
These people shouting about disrespect should ask a brave Vietnam veteran about how it felt to return home for a good U.S.A. mental and verbal ass whupping.
My shoulder holds a chip larger than Mt. Everest about this country that delivered discrimination, and limited opportunity to my black father and many other men and women who enlisted or honored the draft, risked their lives then came home to hatred.
This nation rounded up Japanese Americans and Italian Americans and caged them during World War II. Disrespect? U.S. citizens have a right to peaceful protest and should heed the call to stand against this country in matters of negligence, war and social injustice.