Promises unfulfilled

Claiming love of flag now, Donald Trump got five deferments from Vietnam service. He never saw carnage and horror of war. Thousands of black folk fought and died for the same rights as their fellow white soldiers. The life of my older brother was saved by a black medic in Korea.

Now I ask those critical of “taking a knee for equality”: Where were you when Bull Connor’s police dogs were chewing on the knees of black veterans who’d fought for the rights they were trying to exercise? In their white skins, how can they possibly know how a black person feels as he watches his rights eroded by his government, and he’s supposedly equal ?

This president seems not to realize the flag is a symbol. Blacks fought for what it symbolizes in all American wars since the Revolution, yet have been consistently denied what they fought for since then. This president shows apparent white supremacist sympathies and a woefully inadequate realization of black contributions to this country and the freedoms promised to all equally. Kneeling as a form of protest has a long and honored history in this country, but this president does not evidence much knowledge of this country’s history.

So he, like so many others, thinks kneeling is disrespectful of American values. Why can’t they see it is only a peaceful way of saying this nation in not equally fulfilling its promises?

KARL HANSEN

Hensley