United States of Amnesia

Ties that Bind

Professor Umeme Sababu

August 14 and August 20,  Kaepernick goes unnoticed as he sat during the national anthem. On August 28 he gained national attention stating that “I’m going to continue to stand with the people who are being oppressed. To me this is something that has to change. When there’s significant change and I feel that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent, and this country is representing people that that’s it’s supposed to."  Hence, Colin Kaepernick, although not nearly in league of some of the great social activists heeded the call in the word of the great Paul Robeson...Here I Stand.

 Paul Robeson-Multi-talented singer, actor, athlete, once and American icon lauded as an “artistic and social genius” and “gifted by the gods as musician and actor”. But now his activism, too, intensified. He met President Harry S. Truman to demand anti-lynching legislation, supported the rise of trade unions (at home and abroad) and campaigned in 1948 for the election of the Progressive Party’s candidate Henry A. Wallace as president. It was perhaps inevitable that with the onset of the Cold War both Robeson’s were forced to testify before the McCarthy committee. Defiant, he and his wife, Eslanda Goode Robinson, refused to sign an affidavit declaring that they were not communists – though it seems that neither ever joined the party. Paul was blacklisted and all doors for work closed against him. Furthermore, his passport was revoked, leaving him unable to travel and his income reduced to a trickle. His voice was known and loved all over the world. He had done nothing illegal, never arrested, or put on trial; yet the powers that be were determined to destroy him nonetheless for his political beliefs. “I care nothing – less than nothing – about what the lords of the land, the Big White Folks, think of me and my ideas,” Robeson later wrote, in Here I Stand. “For more than 10 years they have persecuted me in every way they could – by slander and mob violence, by denying me the right to practice my profession as an artist, by withholding my right to travel abroad. To these, the real Un-Americans, I merely say: ‘All right – I don’t like you either!’”

Another great American, Louis Armstrong-Trumpeter and American Icon took a stand. Louis Armstrong was scheduled to perform in The Soviet Union as an ambassador for the State Department to shore up American’s professed creed of freedom. In September of 1957 a group of black students known as the “Little Rock Nine” were being prevented from attending an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. When asked about the crisis in an interview, Armstrong replied, “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell.” He canceled the tour which resulted in scorn and contempt of legions of whites and slew of groups canceling his Armstrong’s concerts.  The comments caused a sensation in the media. Some whites even called for boycotts of the trumpeter’s shows. “I feel the downtrodden situation the same as any other Negro,” Armstrong later said of his decision to speak out. “I think I have a right to get sore and say something about it.”

And then Muhammad Ali on April 28, 1967, Ali, then 25 years old, appeared in Houston for his scheduled induction into the U.S. military. He repeatedly refused to step forward when his name was called. He was convicted of committing a felony offense that was punishable by five years in prison and a fine of $10,000. His license to box was suspended in New York the same day, and his title stripped; other boxing commissions followed. Ali was unable to obtain a boxing license in the U.S. for the next three years. “My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America,” “And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”

In 1968, John Carlos and Tommie Smith took a stand. U.S. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos — who’d won gold and bronze respectively in the 200-meter sprint — raising black-gloved fists during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City became one of the most iconic sports images of the 20th century. nThe protest had been something the two athletes carefully planned. As Smith and Carlos walked to the podium, they took off their shoes to protest poverty. They wore beads and a scarf to protest lynching’s. And when the national anthem was played, they lowered their heads in defiance and raised their fists in a Black Power salute that rocked the world.

They knew it would become “a moment of truth.” And that protesting they might lose everything. “I looked at my feet in my high socks and thought about all the black poverty I’d seen from Harlem to East Texas. I fingered my beads and thought about the pictures I’d seen of the ‘strange fruit’ swinging from the poplar trees of the South,” Carlos wrote 

Finally, Mahmoud Abdul Rauf of the (Denver Nuggets) who was just as good as Stephen Curry refused to stand for the national anthem. Abdul-Rauf first came to public attention as a Louisiana State University freshman sensation then named Chris Jackson. At just 6-foot-1 and 165 pounds, he averaged 30 points per game with a hair-trigger jumper and acrobatic layups. Despite having Tourette’s syndrome, he went pro after his sophomore year, was picked third in 1990 by the Denver Nuggets, and converted to Islam. By the 1995-96 campaign, Abdul-Rauf was doing moves like Stephen Curry moves, such as giving Utah 51 points and dropping 32 points on Michael Jordan when dealing the Chicago Bulls, a rare loss in their 72-win season. That season Abdul Rauf’s conscience told him not to stand for

A first nobody noticed as he stretched or stayed in the locker room. Finally, a reporter asked him and he stated that he could not stand for a flag that represented oppression and racism. N March 12, 1996 he was suspended and although he was the leading scorer on the team he was traded and career came to an immediate halt.

Colin has entered the false premise of American sanctuary. Many forget that he took the San Francisco 49ers to the Super Bowl in 2014 and the NC National Championship, and was considered one of the rising stars in the league before he was injured. But to challenge the old boy network of billionaire owners, many who are supporters of the 45^th president. Kaepernick face nearly universal revulsion from NFL from team owners with notable exceptions of a few coaches. Nevertheless, the die had been cast. After seven weeks of the present season he is still out in the cold.  Although it would be difficult to find the smoking gun that owners have collided and collectively white listed and white balled Colin for daring to exercise his right, it is obvious that he has stepped over the boundaries the white lines of professional sports.

Although he was joined by a few players, the 45^th President the fueled he flame of fire in one of is reality on the stage f Huntsville, Alabama. Speaking to his base he blasted NFL owners. stating “wouldn’t you love to see one lf these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired!” Sunday became a national anthem protest around the league as almost every team staged protest by either kneeing, holding hands or stating in the locker-room

In the minds of owners and some, they are appalled that multimillionaire black football players unappreciative. As one fan put it, just play ball and shut up”. It befuddles me that some social commentators are asking “Nobody is clear on what is being protested???” Racism, discrimination, killing of armed black men school to prison pipeline which is so eloquently discussed in Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, the disrespect of President Barack Obama and the illusion of post racialism and a host of other issues including the appalling discrimination of hiring of black and brown people. I have come to the conclusion that affirmative action is working very well in these institutions, we used to say blacks are last hired and first fired, but now I think it would be correct to say that black and brown are not hired, while whites (qualified and not qualified are hired. Yes, affirmative action is working well in America. And the criminal injustice system is also working well with a long list of unarmed black, brown, yellow and poor whites are killed with impunity.

·      Trayvon Martin

·      Alton Sterling

·      Philando Castille

·      Terrernce Krutcher

·      Keith Lamont Scott

·      Michael Brown

·      Eric Garner

This is not simply a constant reminder the black lives do not mater in this era, but if you read and study the lives of blacks in this country, American justice system has been blind to the constant killings, lynching’s and torture of black people during the century Time does not permit me to traverse the black experience

he 45th President positioned the narrative cloaked in the flag, and patriotism. Richard Petty followed “Anybody that don’t stand up fir that ought to be out of the country, Period” Petty said. “If they don’t appreciate where they are at...what got them where they’re at? The United States. I hoped that we do not allow nor be confused by the essence of the protest and be gulled into the issue of the flag, patriotism and the national anthem, BUT, if you want to go with that narrative, let’s go with it.

During the war of 1812, specifically the Battle of Bladensburg. British Commander Alexander Cochrane offered enslaved Africans Americans freedom if they joined the British...Some would see this as unpatriotic. The question is would you prefer to patriotic and enslaved or be unpatriotic and free. National Anthem: Battle of Bladensburg and Fancis Scott key was not a prisoner. I think the 45tje President would refer to this “fake history” Four Stanza’s...but it is usually song with the last words “o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” But to be truth to history sing the last stanza’ which speaks of the enslaved Africans who vaulted to freedom on the British side during the war. Thus, the songs continues with the fourth stanza:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave,
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Harry Belafonte stated that “to mute the slave has always been to the best interest of the slave-owner.” When black voices are raised in protest to oppression, those who are comfortable with our oppression are the first to criticize for daring to speak out. This is what many of the American populace know and understand, But as A. Philip Randolph stated “If you are comfortable with my oppression then you are my oppressor.”