Just a quick but IMO important note. I assume most people are aware of this, but in case some out there don’t understand how American racism works: Trump and racists like him enjoy nothing more than watching minorities hurt other minorities. They might enjoy it more than watching cops hurt minorities. So if we’re all going to have a moment here and talk about the NFL’s race and patriotism fetish problem, then we need to confront an ugly truth about one very large part of why American football rather than football (soccer), baseball, or basketball is now “America’s sport.”
The reality is that Trump’s base, that 30% of racist white suburban and rural males… part of why they fetishize football like nothing else is because they enjoy the sport of watching black men pound the crap out of one another. They REALLY like it, at a gut level. The NFL is 70% African American, after all.
It’s an ugly truth about American racists and some of the things they enjoy most and yes, the things they believe in wrt policy. They love to see black people hurt other black people. That’s why Trump gleefully made Ben Carson HUD Sec. That’s how shallow all of it really is with racists.
The brutality of the NFL in my view can’t exist outside its American context, and for me it totally taints the entire sport. I find it creepy, quite frankly, given how some slobbering cretins are watching it. We’re talking about tens of millions of freakish Trump sucking bigots getting together every weekend with other alt-righters to watch mandingo fighting. Be in denial about that if you need to, but that’s the reality in large swaths of our country. That’s how THEY see it (or feel it, if it’s not a conscious racism), even if others don’t.
To each their own, but there’s IMO no denying WHY Trump and his 30% of Deplorables feel so strongly about this stuff, the need for overly violent hits, to the point where their anger seems bizarrely out of proportion if you don’t understand where it comes from.
They love the idea of black men hurting, and yes, killing each other. And given the brain disorders, we are talking about a group of 70% African Americans giving each other deadly brain disorders. That makes men like Trump quite giddy, make no mistake.
The NFL is a racist’s metaphorical lynching party after church, a couple steps removed… that’s the fetish.
Every Sunday.
And they really don’t like humanitarians coming in and messing with it.
But if we’re all going to step back and take a fresh look at what the NFL really is... in a country like ours… then let’s just be brutally honest and face ALL of it. Because it’s part of a long legacy, an obsession among racists like Trump, to see minorities hurt other minorities. It makes racists feel strong, like they tricked or forced minorities into doing it for them, so that they don’t have to lower themselves, to stoop, to expend the energy to harm minorities by their own hand.
It’s a big part of what racism and white supremacy have been about in America. There are many examples, from today’s NFL, to crime, drugs, gangs.… and yes, even Ben Carson.
I have no doubt Colin Kaepernick knows how Trump’s base watch the NFL, and I’m sure men like him have long ago come to grips with that part of it. But many people out there may not fully understand just how ugly all of this stuff with Trump, his base, Evangelicals, and the NFL really is, or why he’s using it as a racist dog whistle.