Colin Kaepernick says, “It Would Have Been Hypocritical Of Me To Vote”
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http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2016/11/colin-kaepernick-it-would-have-been-hypocritical-of-me-to-vote/
That statement all by itself almost made me name this post "FROM ZERO TO DUMBASS IN 3. 5 SECONDS because I'm still hot about the fact that black and brown did not come together to outvote our political enemy, namely racist* white folk -- most of whom don't know they are racists*.
A week later, I'm still not feeling completely reasonable. I know most black and brown history has been hidden from black and brown people. I know most black and brown people did not have their people's history shared with them over the dinner table like I did (apparently).
But I'm still HOT about the fact that so many black people don't have a couple of basic life skills that absolutely necessary for the person of color, such as:
1) Knowing regular undercover white racism (Hillary's) from over the top overt white racism.
2) Knowing which racism moves fastest and is deadliest to us.
3) Knowing that peak white violence did not start occurring with the death of Trayvon Martin or any time in the last two decades
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2016/11/colin-kaepernick-it-would-have-been-hypocritical-of-me-to-vote/
Wrong answer, Colin
Believe it or not, things have changed in this country since black people got the right to vote.
For example, the white town fathers can no longer hang a black somebody in the town square, then go door to door and collect all the black people's guns like they did to Ida B Wells and her friends in 1890s.
In fact, Ida B Wells' response to her friends being lynched was just the opposite of Kaepernick's. She started an anti-lynching crusade, became one of our most famous suffragists, and also wound up being a founding member of NAACP.
What Ida B didn't do was run away while saying it be hypocritical of her to try to vote in a system that didn't want her.
Ida B Wells' dreams included more than herself and her own children, and they for damn sure included more than saving face when the road ahead looked rough
And if black people having the right to vote and therefore the ability to affect law doesn't change anything, then why does Colin think he does NOT have to walk down the street with his head down, making sure he doesn't make eye contact with white people like black men did in the 1940s and earlier?
Furthermore, the white people of Ferguson were fleecing the black people of Ferguson through fines, fines, and more fines for decades --- because a huge percentage of black people that lived in Ferguson used to think (past tense) the same thing Colin thinks about voting
'White people own everything. We're powerless and we always will be until...."
Until what is the question.
Until the countries of Africa band together to save us?
Until white people get tired of trying to be the gate-keepers on everything that's positive and natural in this country?
What the heck do Colin and the rest of non-voting black and brown America think is gonna happen if POCs don't vote and find some way of changing the political system?
And if black and brown people affecting change in our country's laws hasn't already changed things for the better why does Colin think he CAN vote?
Does he think white people just felt benevolent one day? (That's practically how white teachers explain history in school) Or did he just forget that people put together their own political groups until they had the right to vote?
If civil rights leaders dying so he could vote, change laws, and speak freely, all while being black, didn't make a difference already, why does Colin Kaepernick think white folks haven't carted his dusty ass off to jail for disrespecting the flag? Doesn't he know they want to?
Do some of these shallow black revolutionaries NOT understand that there's a direct relationship between who votes and who gets to make up the laws?
I wonder how he thinks it is white people don't just walk up and take the riches he's earned under the white owner of his football team? If not for black people voting and having influence over laws, somebody white could walk up and say he stole the money, house, and cars he has. Somebody white could walk up and say the contract he signed isn't valid because he lied about X
or... or... or....
Before black people could vote, white people didn't even have to PRETEND when stealing from us using something like "The New Jim Crow."
Some black folks need to read black history written by other black folks. Old Jim Crow and New Jim Crow are not equal...or at least they weren't until Boss Orange Hogg was elected.
Yeah, we're having a problem with equitable enforcement. But we are NOT having the same problems black people were having in the 1880s or even in the 1980s. Things have gotten better and worse for black people over time. We take 3 steps forward and 1 step back, but things get better. The times we move forward are not because white people felt benevolent from time to time or due to happenstance.
Black and brown people persevered, fought, and died for Colin's right to vote and every single legal right he now possesses
Black and brown people died so that Colin Kaepernick
and some unknown quantity of black men
who didn't vote
along with the black women that followed
these shallow revolutionaries over a cliff
IN ADDITION TO
the traitorous 13% of black men
that voted for the white nationalist's pet mini-dragon
...could join with other to politically protect us from yet another KKK Presidency.
A week has passed and there have been upwards of 200 race/ethnicity/islamophobia/LGBT attacks in U.S. schools alone (Maybe he doesn't care. Maybe he doesn't have kids or have compassion for someone else's kids).
Trump announced a white nationalist as part of his white house.
Trump's already clearing a path for the banksters to take control again
Trump is gonna choose 1 to 3 Supreme Court Justices which will affect us for decades.
Trump is considering Sarah Freaking Palin for Secretary of The Interior. (say goodbye to clean air, water, etc)
Kaepernick is about to find himself in jail for life for jaywalking (read: for being black).
If Colin and the black-than-though gang think the draconian sentencing that happened in the 1990s under the Clintons (with black support) was something, wait until they see what happens next moderate republicans don't turn out to be slightly smarter than Trump
If moderate republicans don't pull Trump back, Trump's greed and xenophobia will wind up destroying us all. (And greed is at the base of most racism and exclusion. Believe it.)
And, like I've repeatedly said before, the hatred and exclusion of everything not white and male could turn out to be the least of our problems once Trump starts opening his mouth to foreign heads of state.
Never forget that the POC demographic that rose united to defend all of us from the Trump was black women. We, as black women decided we had to get over Hillary's bull --of which there was plenty -- so that things that have already begun to happen wouldn't happen at all.
All men of all races go to jail at higher rates than women-- including white men. And black men go to jail at a much, much higher rate than white men due to racism. But Black women got hit by "super predator" too. Black women are in jail 3 times as much as white women.
But black women decided to get over their feelings and move forward.
Black women looked at Hillary and Donald and decided who was the bigger threat. And then black women stepped up to vote for the Hillary-Block.
We, as black women, did not vote for Hillary we loved her. As black women we decided we loved ourselves. As black women we decided we loved black children enough to step up for their future even when the choices weren't great. We, as black women, decided to put faith in a black and brown future in The United States since we don't plan on going back to Africa.
I suppose black women stepped up despite Hillary's crap because we, as black women, have lots of practice getting over hurt feelings....and damage.
Black men fail to step up for black women when WE are killed by police over and over. (I swear I find out about a new black woman killed by police, that I never heard before, once a month.) Yet black women are still loyal to the black community.
Black men protect the Cosbys, Browns, Rices, and Parkers without batting an eyelash even when black women are bleeding and torn on the ground --- while only a fraction of black men will turn around and say to their brothers, "You are so wrong..."
Yet black women are loyal to the black community.
Black women know how to look at the lesser of two evils and make a choice. We don't may put too much faith in people who don't reciprocate like white democrats and a huge swatch of black men. But we don't run because our feelings are hurt. We make choices with whatever we have to work with.
Black men like Kaepernick did not choose to get over a thing.
Kaepernick and the gang chose to protect their hurt feelings over "super predator" and hide their despair through a macho looking, sour grapes attitude.
"This ain't mine anyway. If I can't rule it [easily], then I don't want it anyhow"
When men comfortable with patriarchy start feeling like they are losing they say, "So what? I just won't play."
And while a lot of black men will never say it out loud, voting for a white woman as stop-gap measure protection from a white man that is much worse for was just too shameful.
That feeling of shame was too much for some patriarchal black men to bear -- so they didn't vote at the expense of all black and brown people
That runaway-feeling that some men get has got to be a lot like how some black men in our history left their wives and children when they were struggling to feed them. They couldn't pull together with their wives side by side sometimes. They felt like they were less than men so they left, overwhelmed by the feeling of shame. It took a lot for the black men who couldn't provide to NOT RUN. A lot of them didn't. But some did.
Black people, especially black women, have to know who the heroes and the zeroes are.
I know running when I see it.
Colin is running.
But I guess that's better than black men, the 13%, who love their toxic masculinity so much that they voted for their rich and powerful role model, Donald Trump.
* * * * *
I wish I had more compassion for weak-minded people. I just don't right now. I'm too mad. People of color, men of color, could have prevented a Trump Presidency.
We knew white people were our enemy at the polls. We knew we had to jump over 2/3rd of them.
We knew.
We didn't DO.
We didn't do it.
Worse, Kaepernick is encouraging young black men --who look up to him JUST BECAUSE he plays a sport and is an example of hyper masculinity that's so attractive to young men-- to not vote.
Kaepernick is encouraging black men away from a united front when a smarter white supremacist than Donald is in our future.
We cannot afford shallow and/or fake black male revolutionaries who cannot get past their feels. Tell Kaepernick to do his knee thing during the national anthem, shut his mouth after that, then go cry in the corner if he needs to.
Black women will be out in the open, on the political battlefield, holding it down, as usual. Thank goodness 80% of black men joined us -- but that ain't enough.
White people need to fix their own racism. And black men need to fix their own Toxic Masculinity as well as handle the shallow revolutionaries among them that spread despair in order to cover up their own fears.
updated/completed 11 17 16
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