In the United States, there is an important public insistence that the person’s “freedom” is fundamentally dependent on the person.
Most of the country sees America with a desirable and transformative lens, a utopia without prejudice and without prejudice, where it carries equality of leaving and serves as a pasha for social and racial diseases. When an individual has achieved great financial success, or after the message continues, he will “overcome the scourge of economic and racial inequality and become really“ free ”.
Working in parallel with this respect for this color -blind version of the “American Dream” is the belief that economic privilege necessitates patriotic gratitude. Among the industries and disciplines, the Americans are told to love their nations in a non -critical way, and be grateful to citizens because they are extraordinary enough to live in a country that provides the opportunity to reach the astronomical heights of economic prosperity.
For the black citizens of the country, there is an additional racial assumption that is often hidden under the surface of these concepts: the idea that black success and reserve demand silence in systemic inequality and pressure.
These are durable and fragile ideologies that support the concept of American dream – durable, because they are coded in the texture of American culture (most of the Americans, including African Americans, have easily adopted these ideologies as assumed facts); Nevertheless, it is easy to see that the economic privilege of the person is a terrible obstacle against both individual and systemic discrimination and pressure.
As a result, black people are among the most vocal competitors of these ideologies, as we have seen with Colin Kaepernick and NFL #akneee shows. In a solid show with the free agent players, professional footballers, whose majority of them are black, are kneeling as a way to protest racial injustice and police savagery during the national anthem.
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For the last few weeks, the United States President drew attention to natural tensions that define the ideologies of the “American Dream” through the repeated public criticism of these kneeling NFL players.
Trump recently tweeted, if a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in NFL or other leagues, dedi he tweeted, and should not be allowed to kneel. Mayor Donald Trump, who labeled protestoist actions as “disrespectful ,, asked the players to be fired, encouraged the NFL’s boycott, the league’s defending the anthem and the protesters mocked the protesters as the sons of the bitch”.
In a dramatic job that suits a reality of a reality with a reality television show, Vice President Mike Pence told me to get out of an Indianapolis Colts as soon as any player kneeled. This was a demonstration of power and anger designed to send a spectacular political message, Considering that Trump and Pence knew that COLTS was currently playing San Francisco 49ers, the most protesters. NFL’s announcement that the league is not a plan to punish the protesting players this week, the last activity to provoke the president’s anger; In the early hours of the morning, he went to social media and equalized kneeling once again with “total disrespect” for our country.
As many have noted, the president’s moral anger towards NFL players is selective and deeply flawed – the apparent patriotic loyalty to criticize the abolition of the confederation statues or attack a golden star family. John did not prevent McCain from mocking his military service.
NFL players and defenders many times indicated that protests aim to emphasize racial inequality and pressure. They also explained that their kneeling decisions came out of the desire to protest peacefully and respectfully after a continuous interview. military veterans.
Trump chose to ignore these reasons and structural inequality problems, which motivated protests and raises only the open demonstrations of American patriotism and the “privilege of NFL players. As one of the president’s advisors explained, Trump, by aiming for NFL players in an aggressive way, believes that he has “won the cultural war” that makes the new “cultural war”. [Hillary Clinton]. “
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This sarcastic expression reveals the president’s perception of the supporter base, which foresees him as a Crusader for American values and symbols.
While the Black Protestors threw all of these as antithesis, Trump players marked non -patriotic elite and the enemies of the nation. For a president who has been constantly traveling through domestic and foreign policy since its election, a cultural war between the “hardworking” and “virtuous” working class and middle -class white Americans and the rich, ungrateful, ungrateful black footballers are scattered.
Trump’s attacks on NFL protesters are based on competing tensions in the nature of the American dream: reserve is equal to freedom; This economic privilege demands patriotic gratitude; And most importantly, it requires the silence of black people on racial pressure, invalidating the concerns of individual economic welfare on systemic injustice.
Among the detectors of the protesters, this has become a common line of attack, a way to despise the fidelity of black NFL players, pointing to their sees. The fact that systemic racism is clearly real and that individual welfare does not do anything immune to racial discrimination seems to be lost in the critics of the protesters.
Theirs is a complaint that shows that black athletes should be grateful to live in this country; Since black professional athletes are allowed to play and sign contracts for a significant amount of money, racism cannot exist in America; Black players have owed silence to the nation since they provided opportunities and access to America; They do not have a moral authority in terms of race and inequality due to the individual achievements of black athletes; And these black athletes were never the success of the success of the athletes, instead they were given to them and can be easily taken.
This cultural war on black athletes is not new. Black athletes-and entertainers-talented and artistic talents have long been aware of their strange places in American society, but they have been revised as soon as they use the public platforms to protest systemic racial inequality. The parallels between #aknee protests and protests Muhammad Ali or John Carlos and Tommie Smith It is easily prominent; So there are important similarities. Paul Robeson.
Robeson, an openly anxiety of civil rights activist, college and professional football player, lawyer, opera singer and actor, canceled his passport in 1950 due to actions that destroyed his career. While the institutions canceled their concerts, the “American upward mobility” quickly became the number one ”Star athlete and the entertainer,“ The number one ring became number one ”, the people called the death and the anti -Robeson gangs burned his effects.
During the 1956 Congress hearing, he defeated Robeson, the President of the American Assembly Committee-American Committee, challenged a familiar avoidance and challenged the charges of the show of American racism and racial pressure of the show. He argued that Robeson had not seen a sign of prejudice because he was privileged, went to distinguished universities and played college and professional football.
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Black athletes, even those who are silent, understand that their economic privileges do not insulate them from the realities of race discrimination. They also understand that their wealth and achievements are insecure, and that they are often silent not only on their athletic performances, but also on racial injustice, especially those who seem to have questioned the “American dream, or to include the American people as an association.
It is not surprising that Colin Kaepernick, who made him a national pariah despite his talents in the field, filed a complaint against the NFL and filed a complaint that accuses him of the black ball because of his political beliefs. Kaepernick’s lawyers said, “Principled and peaceful political protest”. It is not known whether Ostracize Kaepernick will win his complaint, but he certainly rooted the claims of his and his lawyers’ controversial definitions of freedom and openly Open Over -Occupational NFL players for the insecure economic privilege.
Black protesters are equivalent to the highest and most vocal critics of the protesters, especially for open oral, betrayal, for the harshest penalties. Perhaps they will take advantage of James Baldwin, who once defending: “I love America more than other countries in this world, and that’s why I insist on criticizing it.”
