NFL Takes a Knee

[BoSoxGal]

Roger Goodell eats crow; does Colin Kaepernick get signed this season?


I hate football; I hate that it ruins bodies and lives and it’s always seemed like a modern plantation system to me.

But a lot of people love it, and it would make a big difference to see Kap get an apology - and a job.

Thoughts?

[dales]

Thoughts?

Yeah, I'm bummed out because the MLB season not to be.

[Joe Guy]

He hasn't played in 3 years. The best offer he could get would most likely be as a backup QB. Also, if he gets hired now, wouldn't the NFL be admitting they had blackballed him? It would look that way even if they didn't. And why take a chance on him? He brings too much baggage and his presence would be a distraction, in my opinion. Whether or not people learned something and will now acknowledge Kaepernick was right to bring the racial problems in America to light, it doesn't mean he is owed a job.

[dales]

"Blackballed"?

That's racist, Joe!

[Joe Guy]

Sorry. I meant Genericballed.

[BoSoxGal]

In case anybody missed the video made by the players:

[dales]

Sorry. I meant Genericballed.

That's better.

Now let me get back to my nap.

[BoSoxGal]

He hasn't played in 3 years. The best offer he could get would most likely be as a backup QB. Also, if he gets hired now, wouldn't the NFL be admitting they had blackballed him? It would look that way even if they didn't. And why take a chance on him? He brings too much baggage and his presence would be a distraction, in my opinion. Whether or not people learned something and will now acknowledge Kaepernick was right to bring the racial problems in America to light, it doesn't mean he is owed a job.

There were many sports folks who said he looked like he was in fit playing condition at his public workout last November. Lots of sports folks have persisted in saying he’s a top notch quarterback who should be playing, the controversy aside. In 2018 Nike made a fortune on the Kaepernick gear campaign, because the youthful fans of the NFL - and even folks who aren’t NFL fans, like me - adore him. Kaepernick is the future of NFL fans, why cater solely to the ones who won’t be around much longer to buy season tickets?

As for an admission of blackballing - they already settled with him on that issue, and NDAs etc. are in place. There’s no issue there.

Millions of fans want to see him play, and I think any team that signs him now - with Goodell’s statement, and Drew Brees now challenging the president on the taking a knee issue - well, that team is going to earn a lot of goodwill and sell a shitload of tickets and Kap gear.

[Bicycle Bill]

Millions of fans want to see him play, and I think any team that signs him now - with Goodell’s statement, and Drew Brees now challenging the president on the taking a knee issue - well, that team is going to earn a lot of goodwill and sell a shitload of tickets and Kap gear.

And that, of course, is the REAL reason we have sports.

-"BB"-

[Joe Guy]

.......Millions of fans want to see him play, and I think any team that signs him now - with Goodell’s statement, and Drew Brees now challenging the president on the taking a knee issue - well, that team is going to earn a lot of goodwill and sell a shitload of tickets and Kap gear.

If Kap plays, he better be good and win games. He would be under a lot of extra pressure. Goodwill won't get a team to the Superbowl. Personally, I don't think he was anything special even though he played for my home team. Also, selling tickets isn't a problem for most teams so unless he plays for a bad team and turns it into a good team, he's not going to bring in more fans.

[liberty]

In my country, everyone has a right to food and shelter, but no one has a right to a job. Your right to work exists only as long as your performance pleases your boss.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Roger Goodell eats crow; does Colin Kaepernick get signed this season? I hate football; I hate that it ruins bodies and lives and it’s always seemed like a modern plantation system to me. But a lot of people love it, and it would make a big difference to see Kap get an apology - and a job. Thoughts?

Whatever condition he's in, the Browns could be improved if he signed up and did nothing but kneel down throughout the game.

[Bicycle Bill]

Trump doesn't like it when blacks take a knee to protest police violence.
He also doesn't like it when they get up off their knees and take to the streets to protest police violence.
Which means to me he is pretty much saying, "Why don't you <inflammatory alternate word for Negroes> just learn your place and get back into it?"
While the refuse of the country — the white supremacists, the closet Klansmen, and bigots of all levels, colors, and stripes — who support him say, "Yeah, man, I love this guy!  He tells it like it is and ain't backin' down from nobody!"
And God help us, there's a helluvalot of 'em.

-"BB"-

[BoSoxGal]

Roger Goodell eats crow; does Colin Kaepernick get signed this season? I hate football; I hate that it ruins bodies and lives and it’s always seemed like a modern plantation system to me. But a lot of people love it, and it would make a big difference to see Kap get an apology - and a job. Thoughts?

Whatever condition he's in, the Browns could be improved if he signed up and did nothing but kneel down throughout the game.

[BoSoxGal]

NFL set to play black national anthem before US national anthem at all week 1 games in September.

This video version was played at the 2009 AA church inaugural ball.


https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/02/sport/nf ... index.html

[Bicycle Bill]

Someone has to ask it, so I will..... A Black National Anthem?  Will we now need to have a Latinx (see, I know all the current 'woke' terms too) National Anthem, or an Asian National Anthem, or an Indigenous Peoples' National Anthem too?  Suppose all the Americans of Scandinavian descent want THEIR own National Anthem?  They'd have to be allowed one too, or you're just one more no-good goddamned racist putting down the pale people.

And just what is the name of this Black "nation"?  Who are its leaders, its lawmakers, its policy-makers?  How does one determine who is, and more importantly, who ISN'T a citizen?  Where is it located, or is it like Brigadoon — something that emerges for a short time once every century and then, just as mysteriously, vanishes back into the mists of time and legend?

A couple of weeks ago I saw where Ghana was inviting African-Americans to "come back home" to the African nation, where they would be welcomed with open arms.  I also didn't see too many persons of color — the same ones who claim to be so disenchanted with the USA — filing emigration papers or booking flights.  They know that even under current conditions they're still better off here than back in the home of their ancestors.

-"BB"-
<edited to correct a typo and spelling error>

[dales]

It seems to me that some Afro-Americans want to SEGREGATE themselves, kind of like under Jim Crow.

Was the late George Wallace right when he exclaimed:

"Segregation now and segregation forever"?

At least it seems to me that separation from society at large might be the goal here.

[Joe Guy]

.......Will we now need to have a Latinx (see, I know all the current 'woke' terms too)......

Jose can you see by the dawn's early light?.....

[Econoline]

I still insist that "latinx" should be pronounced to rhyme with jinx, lynx, and minx and not with Kleenex or Phoenix.

(If whoever invented the word wanted it to rhyme with "kleenex" they should have spelled it "latinex")

[BoSoxGal]

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" was first performed in 1900, at a segregated school in Jacksonville, Fla., by a group of 500 children celebrating the anniversary of the birth of President Lincoln. The first verse opens with a command to optimism, praise and freedom:

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and Heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of liberty

The second verse reminds us to never forget the suffering and obstacles of the past:

Stony the road we trod
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died

The third and final stanza is about the challenges of the future. They are to be met with perseverance, courage, faith, and trust in God:

Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light
Keep us forever in the path, we pray

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" was written at a pivotal time, when Jim Crow was replacing slavery and African-Americans were searching for an identity. Author and activist James Weldon Johnson wrote the words as a poem, which his brother John then set to music. Two key events led to its being named the Negro National Anthem: In 1905, Booker T. Washington endorsed it, and in 1919, it became the official song of the NAACP.

"It spoke to the history of the dark journey of African-Americans," says current NAACP president Derrick Johnson, "and for that matter many Africans in the diaspora [who] struggled through to get to a place of hope."

The song became a rallying cry for black communities, especially in the South. But its influence reached well beyond those boundaries, according to Timothy Askew, an English professor at Clark Atlanta University and scholar of the song's history.

"Even during days of segregation," Askew says, "there were Southern white churches ... who wrote to James Weldon Johnson and who said, 'We are singing that song you called the black national anthem.' People in Japan, South America, people around the world, particularly during the '30s and '40s, were singing this song."

"Lift Every Voice and Sing" faded from popularity towards the end of the civil rights movement in favor of songs like "We Shall Overcome." Askew says the song's recognition as a black national anthem is actually one of the reasons it has moved in and out of favor.

"There were many African-Americans who were in conflict with that idea," Askew says. "They were saying, 'Well, if we have marched, and we have attained what we hope to be equality, we can't have a black anthem. We need an anthem that links us all together."

On the other hand, the song that theoretically should link all Americans together, "The Star Spangled Banner," falls short of that goal according to Shana Redmond.

"The National Anthem, 'The Star Spangled Banner,' was missing something — was missing a radical history of inclusion, was missing an investment in radical visions of the future of equality, of parity," she says. "'Lift Every Voice and Sing' became a counterpoint to those types of absences and elisions."

The song is now widely performed — at churches, schools, and graduation ceremonies and beyond. The Morgan State University Choir opens every concert with it. It's included in nearly 30 different Christian hymnals, both black and white. Even the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has performed it.

In 2009, the entire nation heard its words when Civil Rights leader Rev. Joseph Lowery gave the benediction at President Barack Obama's first inauguration, and began by quoting the song's third verse nearly verbatim.

"It allows us to acknowledge all of the brutalities and inhumanities and dispossession that came with enslavement, that came with Jim Crow, that comes still today with disenfranchisement, police brutality, dispossession of education and resources," Shana Redmond says. "It continues to announce that we see this brighter future, that we believe that something will change.

The reach of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" continues to expand. When Beyoncé sang it at Coachella, she knew the mostly white audience didn't know the history of the black national anthem. But, she told Vogue magazine, "They understood the feeling it gave them."

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/16/63832492 ... nal-anthem