Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
I live in Vikings territory so I learned to ignore NFL games years ago, long before players started kneeling to protest the nation that made them rich.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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I\u2019m glad to see the general public catching up to me.\u00a0 NFL ratings are down and I predict they\u2019ll continue to fall as Liberals use the NFL as a platform to scold ordinary Americans for being hateful, racist, deplorable people.\u00a0 They\u2019re driving away their own customers, killing their own golden goose, and it warms my heart to see it. Shortsightedness should always be rewarded, and brutally.<\/p>\n
The protesters are nearly all Black.\u00a0 They kneel to protest racism in America.\u00a0 I wonder if those players have any idea how slender the margin separating America today from Perfect Utopia, and how vast the gulf separating opportunities for Blacks to succeed in America versus other nations?<\/p>\n
If the protesting players had grown up in any other nation on earth, would they be millionaires?\u00a0 Would they have had public education, affirmative action, athletic scholarships, personal trainers, agents, coaches, publicists, union representatives . . . all striving to make them into one-percenters? \u00a0Some of them might be brilliant men and superb athletes who would succeed in any situation; but all of them?\u00a0 Seems unlikely.\u00a0 In other nations, they\u2019d have been subjected to far worse conditions.\u00a0 And so would the slower, dumber brethren for whom they kneel.\u00a0 Racism is not unique to America.\u00a0 But upward mobility for Blacks as a racial minority?\u00a0 That very nearly is. What are the prospects for Blacks in Finland?\u00a0 France?\u00a0 Fiji?<\/p>\n
Worse, the protesters can\u2019t seem to understand why anyone would object to their disgraceful conduct during the national anthem.\u00a0 The coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mike Tomlin, is himself a Black man who urged his team to have 100% participation.\u00a0 He\u2019s upset that one player broke ranks, failed to support the team<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Alejandro Villanueva, the Steelers player who stood with his hand over his heart for the national anthem, served three tours in Afghanistan as an Army Ranger where he was awarded a Bronze Star with V (for Valor In Combat) and with oak leaf (meaning he\u2019s been awarded that medal twice).\u00a0 Villanueva doesn\u2019t have anything to prove to his Black coach or to the Black players on his team.\u00a0 But they could learn a lot from him.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n