Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don’t Tell Colin Kaepernick to "Stick to Sports"; ‘Where Is the Support from the White Players?’
The Hollywood Reporter
The truth is ugly as sin. The NFL is denying Colin Kaepernick employment not because he isn’t “good enough” but because he is being shut out for the crime of using his platform to protest the killing of black kids by police. NFL owners don’t make pariahs out of players who beat women or face accusations of murder. Kaepernick’s pariah status is about sending a shot across the bow at every political athlete—particularly black athletes—that they better toe the line.
Six New England Patriots are sitting out a visit with Trump after their Super Bowl win. “I just don’t feel welcome in that house. I’m going to just leave it at that.” Supportive fans want the boycott to grow bigger.
This year's Super Bowl between the Falcons and Patriots is viewed by many across football as a battle of cultures. On one end, some in the game see the Patriots as a conveyor belt of winning machinery, aligned with Donald Trump, but despised by a large swath of the American populace. On the other are the Falcons, a talented, less rigid team, supported by a city starving for a winner and viewed as the welcome alternative in this fight.
Cleveland's baseball team flaunts the most spectacularly racist logo in professional sports. When the American League Championship series shifted to Toronto, a First Nations activist, Douglas Cardinal, went to Ontario court to bar the logo from being worn while the team played in Toronto, deeming the name and logo to be violations of the Ontario Human Rights code. Major League Baseball and the Cleveland Indians' front office sent 27 lawyers to challenge this.
ubs in the World Series. Yes it could be! Who would have thought a Brooklyn-born socialist senator from Vermont, would win 13 million votes, capturing 23 primaries and caucuses; that a scrappy senior would inspire the youth of the country, and a whole country? Who would have thunk it? Can the Cubs also inspire their fans, and keep hope alive? Can the Cubs capture the spirit of the country as we prepare for the November elections? Yes we can has new meaning this year!
If Kaepernick had donated $1 million without the anthem protest, or if he’d stuck to venting on social media, then prominent columnists and TV yakkers wouldn’t be calling him an idiot. Nobody would be saying anything at all, because nobody would care. Kaepernick’s gesture worked because it was divisive.
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