When it comes to Nike, Big Dog Ranch just does it wrong
Colin Kaepernick ought to be a hero, not a villain, at the Big Dog Ranch Rescue in Loxahatchee Groves.
Let me explain.
Last week, Lauree Simmons, the president of the largest no-kill shelter in the Southeast, reacted to a Nike ad that supported the former NFL quarterback, who led the sideline kneeling protests during the playing of the national anthem before games.
“I don’t want to see Nike shoes around our facility,” Simmons told Palm Beach Post reporter Alexandra Clough. “I don’t want to see them at Big Dog Ranch.”
After a day of backlash, Simmons, through a spokesman, said that Nike products wouldn’t be banned, but that Simmons would buy other brands of shoes for any workers there who wore Nikes and voluntarily wanted to wear another pair. It was explained as a “personal offer,” not an actual ban.
“She understands it’s a free country,” Simmons’ spokesman said.
Yeah, Simmons really stepped in it.
It’s not the first time that the local pet shelter has clumsily created a political mess. When President Donald Trump equated white supremacists with protesters of Confederate monuments in Charlottesville, Virginia, a year ago, it prompted scores of local charities to cancel their annual events at his Mar-a-Lago.
After being pressured, the
Big Dog Ranch Rescue followed the exodus, announcing it wouldn’t hold its Wine, Women & Shoes fundraiser at Trump’s Palm Beach club. But the group clearly didn’t have its heart into it.
After all, the charity event is co-chaired by Lara Trump, the wife of the president’s son, Eric.
So, two months after announcing it would boycott Mar-a-Lago, the Big Dog Ranch Rescue rescheduled the event back at Mar-a-Lago, saying it was the best venue.
“This isn’t about politics,” Simmons said when announcing the move back to Mar-aLago. “This is about the dogs and the work we do. It’s about expanding our mission. And quite frankly, if people want to take a political stance, then they don’t care about what we do and the animals.”
So it’s a little ironic that the shelter was above politics when it came to turning a deaf ear to Trump’s “good people” defense of white supremacists shouting
“Jews will not replace us!” and “Blood and Soil!”, the Nazi ideology chant.
But the charity was suddenly all ears this month over a Nike advertisement that acknowledged Kaepernick for jeopardizing his career to call attention to the persistent prejudice and harmful profiling that black people face during law enforcement encounters.
Trump has tried to characterize the protests started by Kaepernick as disrespect to the flag and military veterans, but that’s just an old trick of his. Like the time he ignored Palm Beach building codes to put an 82-foot flagpole on the front lawn of Mar-a-Lago — more than double the maximum height allowed.
When the town told him he needed a variance for such a large pole, Trump sued the town for millions of dollars, saying they were unpatriotic because they didn’t love the flag he would fly on the oversized flagpole.
So Trump’s playing another patriot game, this time signaling to his white base that he doesn’t buy this idea of institutional mistreatment of black Americans, while also trying to hurt the NFL, a league that denied his ownership bids twice.
The mistreatment of black people ought to be obvious to anybody who’s half paying attention. There are fresh reminders of it on a regular basis.
OK, want one? Last week, Roosevelt McClary, 30, a Broward County teachers union executive and candidate for the Lauderdale Lakes City Commission, was dressed in a campaign T-shirt and passing out campaign literature by doing door-to-door canvassing during his lunch break. Candidates for municipal elections do this all the time.
But when McClary, who is black, went door to door, it prompted a massive police response. A police helicopter was launched. Officers arrived in unmarked cars. K-9 units responded. McClary was forced to sit on the pavement for 10 minutes until officers finally let him go, The Miami Herald reported.
That didn’t happen to the white municipal candidates who knocked on my door in Boca Raton.
And here’s the thing: People who run animal shelters ought to be more aware of color prejudice — even in animal shelters run by Trump apologists.
That’s because the same color prejudice that exists with people also exists with dogs. It’s a well-known phenomenon called Black Dog Syndrome, which explains why black dogs are the hardest to place out of shelters.
Just ask Palm Beach County’s Director of Animal Care and Control Dianne Sauve.
“You’ve got to market the black dog’s attributes and talents,” she told me in a column I wrote about the phenomenon. “I’ve seen a group of Chihuahuas go in and the last one to go is the black one. I just don’t get it.”
Some explain it by rationalizing that black dogs shed too noticeably, get too hot or look older. Or that facial features are too obscured in black dogs. But a study done by Penn State University suggests an irrational prejudice.
The study showed people photos of dogs of different colors. The black dogs, just by their photos, were assumed to be less friendly and more aggressive than dogs of other colors, the study found.
Like I said, Colin Kaepernick ought to be a hero, not a villain, at the Big Dog Ranch Rescue.