NEVER FORGET: COLIN KAEPERNICK DETAILS ON NFL ANTHEM PROTEST | SO WHY THE CONFUSION?
- Thread starter Quek9
- Start date
http://www.espn.com/espnradio/play?id=21045542
All these injuries has Bomani wondering if the NFL has a star problem. Ryan Smith explains Colin Kaepernick's grievance against the NFL.
All these injuries has Bomani wondering if the NFL has a star problem. Ryan Smith explains Colin Kaepernick's grievance against the NFL.
Last edited:
Jackie Robinson: 'I Cannot Stand and Sing the Anthem. I Cannot Salute the Flag
It hadn’t been easy. Some of my own teammates refused to accept me because I was black. I had been forced to live with snubs and rebuffs and rejections. Within the club, Mr. Rickey had put down rebellion by letting my teammates know that anyone who didn’t want to accept me could leave. But the problems within the Dodgers club had been minor compared to the opposition outside. It hadn’t been that easy to fight the resentment expressed by players on other teams, by the team owners, or by bigoted fans screaming “******.” The hate mail piled up. There were threats against me and my family and even out-and-out attempts at physical harm to me.
Some things counterbalanced this ugliness. Black people supported me with total loyalty. They supported me morally: they came to sit in a hostile audience in unprecedented numbers to make the turnstiles hum as they never had before at ballparks all over the nation. Money is America’s God, and business people can dig black power if it coincides with green power, so these fans were important to the success of Mr. Rickey’s “Noble Experiment.”
Some of the Dodgers who swore they would never play with a black man had a change of mind when they realized I was a good ballplayer who could be helpful in their earning a few thousand more dollars in World Series money. After the initial resistance to me had been crushed, my teammates started to give me tips on how to improve my game. They hadn’t changed because they liked me any better, they had changed because I could help fill their wallets.
Robinson wrote that despite developing genuine friendships with some of his teammates, and feeling genuine love from many of the fans, he had never stopped feeling like an outsider in his own game, and in his own country:
There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series,
It hadn’t been easy. Some of my own teammates refused to accept me because I was black. I had been forced to live with snubs and rebuffs and rejections. Within the club, Mr. Rickey had put down rebellion by letting my teammates know that anyone who didn’t want to accept me could leave. But the problems within the Dodgers club had been minor compared to the opposition outside. It hadn’t been that easy to fight the resentment expressed by players on other teams, by the team owners, or by bigoted fans screaming “******.” The hate mail piled up. There were threats against me and my family and even out-and-out attempts at physical harm to me.
Some things counterbalanced this ugliness. Black people supported me with total loyalty. They supported me morally: they came to sit in a hostile audience in unprecedented numbers to make the turnstiles hum as they never had before at ballparks all over the nation. Money is America’s God, and business people can dig black power if it coincides with green power, so these fans were important to the success of Mr. Rickey’s “Noble Experiment.”
Some of the Dodgers who swore they would never play with a black man had a change of mind when they realized I was a good ballplayer who could be helpful in their earning a few thousand more dollars in World Series money. After the initial resistance to me had been crushed, my teammates started to give me tips on how to improve my game. They hadn’t changed because they liked me any better, they had changed because I could help fill their wallets.
Robinson wrote that despite developing genuine friendships with some of his teammates, and feeling genuine love from many of the fans, he had never stopped feeling like an outsider in his own game, and in his own country:
There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series,
I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey’s drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.
