NOT BLACK AND WHITE
DEAR Colin Kaepernick,
For what it’s worth, I agree with you. I’m also convinced blacks are America’s most oppressed race. And I’m pleased you’re the latest pro athlete to exploit his or her status to take a stand, yours by sitting during the national anthem.
But we disagree on who the oppressors are. You believe it’s white America, the America that helped do the once imponderable: elect a black President, and not once, but twice.
I believe that the greatest oppressors of black Americans are black Americans. And they’re encouraged to continue by a say-what-youwant-to-hear leadership and messengers, from the President to a frightened media, politicians of every office, and activists, both black and white, empowered by their steady unwillingness to tell clear, present and sustaining truths in service of genuine for-the-better change.
Consider that when a murder or murders of black men, women and children occur in a black neighborhood, its residents are conditioned to be uncooperative with cops and detectives — “snitches get stitches” — in pursuit of the murderer or murderers lest they and their families suffer retaliatory harm, including murder.
Now that, Colin, that’s oppression. It’s a gangs-as-Gestapo mentality and reality that exists — and rules — within black communities throughout this country.
Oppression? Colin, you’re one lucky young man to have escaped another epidemic of black-on-black oppression. You were adopted by a man and a woman and raised in a presumably loving, nurturing household. You were raised by two on-the-job parents.
You beat another common, almost standard reality: black self-oppression.
You can’t abide by a national anthem that makes you think about the oppression of minorities? Try thinking about the 380,000 Northern soldiers who died in the Civil War primarily fighting to end the enslavement of black men, women and chil- dren more than 150 years ago.
Why, Colin, is American black culture still synonymous — from the abuse of women, to violent crime, to absentee parents, to gangs substituting for families, to “Black Power” politicians who steal from the black poor and pocket it (and often are then reelected) — with sustaining self-oppression?
Colin, you cited the Black Lives Matter movement as one you support. But logical people of all races wonder why such a noble-titled movement assiduously avoids addressing, let alone protesting, the avalanche of daily and nightly murders of blacks by blacks in virtually every city in this country.
How is it, Colin, that it doesn’t matter to Black Lives Matter that the blood of black men, women and children daily fills the streets of Newark, Chicago, Detroit, Compton, East St. Louis, Baltimore, Birmingham and Miami? Why is Black Lives Matter’s outrage, copied from the plan of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and, so sadly, President Obama, so hideously selective?
Obama says he has suffered the racism of whites locking their cars when he came into view. But don’t most people lock their cars, regardless? Does Obama think cars parked in black neighborhoods sit unlocked?
Colin, I’m a liberal-in-exile, a disenfranchised Democrat who now often chooses practicality over ideology. Which flight would the ACLU lawyer who sues to prevent profiling choose for his or her family to board? The one that promises no profiling for terrorists or the one that guarantees it?
During the Trayvon Martin killing calamity in Florida, NBA players wore hoodies to symbolize the stereotyping that inspired Martin’s assailant, George Zimmerman.
Yet in the months before and after that NBA protest, crimes commonly were committed — and still are — by those who tried to obscure their identities beneath hoodies.
As those NBA protests occurred, an episode of “Bait Car,” which tracks cops as they pursue car thieves, appeared. This particular segment followed Officer Price of the Atlanta PD, who rode up at a red light alongside two young black men.
“I see two males riding with hoodies on their head, and it’s nice and warm,” said Price. “I’m suspicious.”
When he tried to pull over the car, a chase was on.
“I called it,” said Price, as he hit the gas. The perps, ages 16 and 17, lost control of the stolen car, slamming into a house.
For what it’s worth, Colin, Officer Price is black. And, for what it’s worth, Colin, black police officers are no more eager to go home dead than are white ones.
For what it’s worth, Colin, we agree: The oppression of black Americans remains staggering. But those slave ships haven’t arrived here in over 150 years. The oppression of American blacks is primarily perpetrated by American blacks.
And I further agree, Colin, the oppression of American blacks must stop.