On The Anthem, Nuk Hopkins And Black Lives Matter

Sep 15, 2016, 9:29 AM

So here is where I get the confuse. Kapernick and his band of hashtag warriors want to protest to allegedly "drive the conversation". Dabo gets out there and from the heart adds his voice bravely to the conversation. A conversation by it's very nature includes a variety of voices from variety of sources that are not all going to be in concert or alignment. Conversations on tough topics are messy by nature.

What is interesting to me is the media immediately cheers Kapernick for his starting the conversation but then mostly blasts Dabo, with a few exceptions, for presenting his own voice to the discussion. Let's be frank, Kapernick and the radical edges of the Black Lives Matter movement don't really want a conversation, they want inditements, reparations and public pilloring of white American establishment that they feel has oppressed them. I truly believe moderate voices from the black community want a fix, want a conversation and want to just live their lives without pain. Dialogues like Dabo's essentially call the radical's bluff because it seeks to solve and get to root cause versus just passively aggressively attacking their enemy.

Interestingly, the minute folks disagree on topics of race they immediately go to "you can't ever understand", "you were never oppressed", "you were never called an N". In fairness these statements are true but in a macro sense humans have always discriminated and oppressed those that are different whether they be red heads, gay, transgender, multi-gender, fat, dirty coots, ugly, geeky, too tall, too short, too thin, tattooed, of another faith, of another nationality or a member of hufflepump or gryfindor. All discrimination and hate of our brothers and sisters is bad, all of us have at sometime felt that pain of exclusion, so to say we or Dabo don't understand is flat out crap. I bet Dabo knows what it has felt like to be ostracized and knows what it likes to ask God why me, why am I not good enough to have my fellow humans love me for what I am.

So I don't buy for a minute that those that are not black don't know what the pain of being left out feels like. I do concede that most Americans don't live it with the frequency black citizens do and that it is easier to overcome some of the other discriminatory factors than it is to do with race. The answer to this problem does not lie in vitriolic us versus them rhetoric and trying to systematically exclude voices that have the courage to participate in the discussion as many are doing to Dabo, it lies in following Dabo's suggestion of loving each other as our Lord asked us to do and having a real conversation, not hiding behind behind the pretenses of doing so in a contrived effort to manipulate the system for gain.

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Now we have more "suppression" than "oppression." Maybe a trival detail, but key in determining fixes. Oppression is an active measure to keep someone under the power of another. Suppression can be accidental or unrecognized. Lets be honest, there is very little systematic oppression now. Sure there will always be stereotypes and ignorant people, but there are no rules in place that keep people down.

But people's ability to get out of their current environment is largely suppressed because of their economic situation. If you grow up poor, or in poor counties you are pretty much going to have the exact same life regardless of skin color. There isn't a whole lot of difference in the poverty in some big city as there is in the poverty in some dirt farming community. There are options available to get out of poverty if you want to take advantage of them. But its easier to say that someone is out to get you (oppressed) rather than recognize that you theoretically have a great deal of control (suppressed).

On The Anthem, Nuk Hopkins And Black Lives Matter

According to them, you're only "adding to the conversation"

With them its only a conversation if its one sided!

You must be a bigot.

Or rascist. Whatever hurtful meanigless word they want

Exactly...Try Just Starting a Conversation at Work

BLM doesnt want change

Re: BLM doesnt want change

Re: BLM doesnt want change

Certainly a Big Part of It

Agree with this 100%

Black Man on the wrong side of the argument

Re: BLM doesnt want change

Oppression/suppression has many forms

Nuanced But Relevant

Re: On The Anthem, Nuk Hopkins And Black Lives Matter

Walrus: I grew up in the 60's and 70's and I was

This statement felt passive aggressive

No was calling Kapernick out for really doing nothing

Re: On The Anthem, Nuk Hopkins And Black Lives Matter

David Duke, that you?

Re: On The Anthem, Nuk Hopkins And Black Lives Matter

TigerBoard POTD