OT: NFL and the Anthem -

[berserk87]

I hesitated to click on this thread because I thought it would spiral out of control with personal attacks. Outside of some random snark, it's been a great thread.

I am going to try my best to summarize the root cause this issue.

My take on what is motivating the anthem protests is that it's somewhat connected to the Black Lives Matter movement. My takeaway from the BLM movement is that blacks are frustrated that when a black person is killed (by either a police officer (perhaps unjustly) or civilian), it does not make waves. They feel that society has normalized these deaths. They see a long history of abuses at the hands of police that go unnoticed or unpunished. They see stories of murders in the paper of black youths that are buried in the "Local News" section and not on the front page.

I am not the most eloquent on this topic. I don't profess to be 100% accurate on the above. That's just what I can recall. And you can debate the issues that I have noted - I'm not here to defend or condemn them via this post - I'm just stating what I think the cause of the kneeling was, initially.

The sad this is that the current state of the protests has spiraled beyond its intent. There is so much noise surrounding the issue that it's hard to remember how it all started.

[Climb01742]

Originally Posted by makoti

Because there are SO many African-American nascar drivers...

And the one flag you see more at Nascar events than the American flag is:

[cmg]

Originally Posted by jtbadge

Man, if only America would get as riled up about the systemic racial discrimination and police brutality happening today as they do about someone sitting through 200 year old song.

and yet some are still puzzled over what it's about.......... thanks for the mid thread chuckle.

[chiasticon]

Originally Posted by makoti

Because there are SO many African-American nascar drivers...

allegedly only four since 1961. no idea about their crews though... (I don't know a lot about NASCAR, but I do know their crew is quite important.)

Originally Posted by Climb01742

And the one flag you see more at Nascar events than the American flag is:

yep.

[bthornt]

[QUOTE=chiasticon;2238369]allegedly only four since 1961. no idea about their crews though... (I don't know a lot about NASCAR, but I do know their crew is quite important.)

Wow, only 4? It's almost as bad as professional cycling.

[MikeD]

Sports players should stick to playing sports when on the job, and protest on their own time. Steph Curry dissed the president and the office of the president and thus got the whole team disinvited. If I were the president I would have done the same.

[FlashUNC]

Originally Posted by MikeD

Sports players should stick to playing sports when on the job, and protest on their own time. Steph Curry dissed the president and the office of the president and thus got the whole team disinvited. If I were the president I would have done the same.

They've done that too and gotten flak for it.

There's ultimately no protest that will generate zero backlash, because the nature of a protest is bringing to light issues that maybe some folks don't want to address.

[gasman]

Okay - you all have kept this pretty darn civil but ... it's run it's course and politics are still not allowed here.

Thanks for playing.