Kinja reply list

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FreeRonMichael Harriot
11/30/17 12:33pm
Imagine working for something your entire life, since you were six years old, breaking bones; throwing up on the sidelines, risking your brain to achieve the one goal you had for your entire life. Now imagine coming to the realization that there is something more important: The very lives of your people.
So you make the choice to fight for that new thing while pursuing your dream. Then, you are told that you can’t do both, that you will have to sacrifice the thing you’ve loved your entire life for the chance to make a difference. So you give up your money, your career and your dreams to start a movement and it begins to work. Everyone notices. Your movement actually becomes a topic of discussion, which is all you ever wanted. Then one day, you turn around ...
And someone auctions it off for a motherfucking layaway scholarship plan.
All. Of. That. Forever.
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  LawrenceFreeRon
  11/30/17 1:38pm
  Agreed. This is powerful.
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  CrunchyThoughtsFreeRon
  11/30/17 3:43pm
  They walk in the footsteps of Jesse and Vernon by accepting such an offer. That path has not and does not lead to the problem being solved, as the Rainbow Coalition and the Urban League have shown us.
  It’s like accepting boxes of baking soda to cover the dump someone’s dog took on your carpet while the dog is behind your couch taking another you will smell only when it’s too late. The carpet needs to be replaced and the dog needs to be taught not to sh!t or be a racist. But you can’t teach these old white dogs a damn thing. You’d think we could at least see this coming after all this time, same old tricks.
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TheRealMarthaJones3.0Michael Harriot
11/30/17 2:07pm
Team Michael.
There are a lot of black people who have this attitude in regards to money and their humanity. Particularly in regards to the black pursuit of Capitalism at all costs. That their humanity is for sale. That there is a price you can put on it. Thinking about the United States, and how capitalism informed it’s beginnings, I don’t understand. White people think and assume they can buy us, because they did for over a century. So when you continue to take money for the violations of your rights and person hood. Why should they come to the conclusion that they no longer own you?
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BlackMage2030Michael Harriot
11/30/17 1:05pm
Maybe if they switched that M in $100M to a B paid to form a lobbying arm in the US government that looking into law enforcement overreach and racial disparity in sentencing with as much power and teeth as the NRA I’d be on the Crockett side, but $100 million paid out over 7 years if the value of money remained static at 2017 levels... no. That’s ass-wiping money, that’s ten decent player contracts, that’s NOTHING.
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  sTalkinggoat, first and last of his nameBlackMage2030
  11/30/17 1:12pm
  I mean 100 mil split among 32 owners over 7 years is 450K a year each. That’s probably less than they spend on hookers and blow. Those players sold themselves out for pocket change.
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  JayFrasTalkinggoat, first and last of his name
  11/30/17 1:45pm
  250k per owner per year and the rest from the general fund (read: money that was earmarked for other charity work that will now be shell gamed to another cause) from what I read.
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sTalkinggoat, first and last of his nameMichael Harriot
11/30/17 12:34pm
They sold themselves out. 25 mil to the UNCF might send a lot of kids to college but I don’t understand how that’s going to prevent cops from shooting them.
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  cogitosTalkinggoat, first and last of his name
  11/30/17 2:48pm
  winner
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OctoberSurpriseMichael Harriot
11/30/17 1:52pm
My understanding is this is an “agreement in principle” meaning nothing is finalized.
If that is the case then the players have more work to do on a number of fronts, and since they are used to having leverage it doesnt surprise me they aren’t swinging a bigger stick in these discussions. Firstly, there should be no quid pro quo with respect to protesting and the promises the league is making. If the league wants to do some good, then it should do so regardless of player protest. secondly, the set up over how funds would be distributed tilts in favor of the league (7 league reps, 5 player reps) That should be flipped, or made 50/50). I think the league leaked details of the plan to capitalize on the schism between the players. But what it has done is exposed what many will see as a shrewd offer that requires the players to sacrifice their 1st amendment rights to secure some money for several good causes. The flip side to this is the NFL looks like the asshole, by tying its participation in these causes to undercutting the rights of the players in terms of them expressing their concern via protest.
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  Michael HarriotOctoberSurprise
  11/30/17 1:58pm
  The players have agreed. The “in principle” part refers to the fact that the owners must vote to ratify this at their December meeting.
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  TorslinMichael Harriot
  11/30/17 3:13pm
  For real. I like to think a large part of his movement will still go on. It is crazy sports reporters don’t cover this anymore. Eli Manning gets benched for GENO Smith and there is a former Superbowl Qb who had good numbers last season sitting. If it was anyone but Kap they would be talking about it all week.
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KC Complains A LotMichael Harriot
11/30/17 12:41pm
So many feelings on this one. The primary being “fuck the money, that’s not what this was about”.
With all due respect to Malcolm Jenkins, he’s become the anti-protest movements “respectable negro”, the one who does things the right way and actually capitulates and talks to white people and raises his fist instead of kneels so it’s kinda okay. It’s no surprise that he would rather take the money here in agreement for not kneeling, which is what all this is about. Jenkins and Boldin want to give the NFL’s white owners something for money that won’t get at the root cause of the problem.
That money will be split amongst all the league’s owners and will be a drop in a bucket for them. They get a nice PR boost, some ethnically diverse commercials, and the comfort of knowing that shit that makes them uncomfortable can be silenced with enough money.
What do the players get? Money. That’s it. The owners aren’t going to admit Black Lives Matter. They’re not going to sign Kap. They’re going to write a check and then proceed to watch young black men destroy themselves for profit while they donate funds to our racist ass President.
Fuck that. It was never about money. It was about forcing white America to admit that black people deserve to live. That we shouldn’t be gunned down first and have questions asked later. Money solves NONE of that.
You know why the NFL’s ratings are down? Because they’ve sanitized the product so the league has no transcendent stars. Because the Bills pulled a perfectly acceptable young, black QB in the middle of a playoff race for a tall white guy because they think the tall white guy fits their offense better for no reason other than him being a tall white guy. Because it cost a rent check to go to a game. Because they nuked three large markets to move teams to places no one wants to see football.
The protests have been a convenient scapegoat for the NFL bubble bursting. Blake Bortles and Blaine Gabbert faced off in a fucking late afternoon game. White owners would rather blame players than their own shitty product.
They can keep the money, and Malcom Jenkins can keep his respectability politics. Players like Eric Reid would rather have their dignity and kneel.
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  KC Complains A LotKC Complains A Lot
  11/30/17 4:44pm
  For the record Malcolm Jenkins just announced that he would no longer protest the anthem by raising his face, essentially confirming that he sold out for his silence.
  I’m not saying Malcolm Jenkins is a coon, but I am saying he’s coon-adjacent.
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  IslaLatinaKC Complains A Lot
  12/01/17 2:12pm
  For the record Malcolm Jenkins just announced that he would no longer protest the anthem by raising his face
  I’m assuming you meant “raising his fist” but it’s a very interesting typo nonetheless...
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HuskyBroMichael Harriot
11/30/17 12:49pm
The NFL is paying hush cash in 7 annual payments like black pain and suffering is like a tax write off?
Fuck you NFL, I don’t want your concussion (blood) money.
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  PsiPhiGrrrlHuskyBro
  11/30/17 1:26pm
  Seriously - how many will die during those 7 years? As was mentioned above, the amount is not only a drop in the bucket compared to what the league and these owners rake in every year, it’s not even a lump sum. In a year or two, cue the excuses about why the next payment is not coming. I am doubly disgusted.
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Sweet Potato Sam AKA Party Leader of the Thundercrats HOOOOO!Michael Harriot
11/30/17 1:27pm
So, basically all the entire population of Black Lives in America are worth is 100 Million. There’s more than 300 Million black folk in the US (Agressive Rounding), so we each equal about 30 cents, or so. Actual slaves sold in America costed more per head than that.
For that amount, they can silence any dissent to our outright and wholesale murder by state sanctioned agents. Now, whenever anybody talks about BLM, some asshole can say “We already gave you money, shut the fuck up and we’ll kill you.”
Black people have known that America has been out to fuck them up for decades, if not centuries (Yes, black folk have not mattered in America outside of whatever value could be wrung from them for HUNDREDS OF YEARS It’s actually painful to type). In all that time, we finally get a foothold to at least ACKNOWLEDGE that we are being murdered and that proves to be too much. On top of that, they buy that silence, but don’t even involve the guy that started the protest and sacrificed the most for it?
The worst part was that football wasn’t being affected at all. They were still free to smash these people against each other like toddlers playing with action figures. They were free to continue unabashed racism like the Washington Racist Football Group. They were free to continue to foster their ridiculous manufactured Sisyphean tribalism for fun and disgusting profit. Nobody stopped playing, nobody disrupted any of the actual dirt that is integral to the NFL on the daily. Hell, all they did was sit down and shut up. But of course a silent, non-violent protest would be too offensive. Everything except being living commodities is too offensive.
Status Quo says Business as Usual. Your lives are nothing to our sportball.
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  Captain CupholderSweet Potato Sam AKA Party Leader of the Thundercrats HOOOOO!
  11/30/17 9:19pm
  Just a quick (maybe pedantic) point of fact: there are not “more than 300 million black folks in the US” - there are about 325 million people altogether in the US, of which roughly 12.6% are Black or African American.
  http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/united-states-population/
  That works out to roughly 41 million black people in the US. $100 mil. / 41 mil. AAs = $2.44, not 30 cents.
  Which... doesn’t change your point(s) at all. Even if the math were different, and the figure was $100, or $1,000, or $1 mission, the whole point of ending slavery was that black people are human beings, and shouldn’t and can’t be treated as commodities.
  But the (mostly black) players are still basically considered commodities by owners (that’s essentially what the draft is: buying and selling players/people); given that, it’s not surprising that’s how the NFL decided to “address” the “problem” of a) protesting the national anthem or b) their ratings slump, depending on how you view the situation I guess. If the NFL had two choices (they had much more than two, but let’s pretend): a) actively work to address injustices against black people by police, the courts, etc. and b) spend $100 million so everyone would just shut the fuck up and we can get back to colliding people against each other for fun and profit? Well then there was never any real choice; $100 mil. it is.
  Anyway, I agree w/ all the rest of your points, just the math was off.
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hillratMichael Harriot
11/30/17 2:01pm
I’ll start off with the fact that if you say fuck the money and fuck the people that took it, I totally get that. There are times when a practical, mostly OK, but incomplete solution isn’t going to get it done for me. If this is the hill you choose to die on, I love and respect your decision. It takes a lot of integrity and strength to walk away from $100MM, apparently more than I have.
I say take the money because you’re not going to get a better offer. Now of course I know that offering up a pile of money to shut up and go away is the go to move for a bunch of rich, old assholes. But what was the end game here? If every player in the NFL had knelt for the Anthem were police officers going to suddenly be like, “I’ve been taught to hate & fear Black men my whole life [think to himself, it’s part of why I became a cop], but now I’m going to keep my gun holstered the next time I get nervous when dealing with a Black person.” I think not. So what, exactly, did we expect to come out of all of this?
Kaep started this to highlight the issue of the oppression of black & brown people in the USA and police killing us with impunity. Mission accomplished. If I was an NFL player I would have knelt with him. IMHO Kaep got this conversation started and kept it going, but kneeling during the National Anthem isn’t going to solve anything. The only way to get things done in this world is with money. Now you can say this is what these owners found in their couch cushions and this doesn’t mean anything to them and whatever the fuck else, but all I know is that the UNCF is going to have $25MM that it didn’t have on Monday morning.
Sometimes you gotta take yes for an answer and keep it moving.
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  sTalkinggoat, first and last of his namehillrat
  11/30/17 4:31pm
  No.
  
  I say take the money because you’re not going to get a better offer.
  Again, No. We didn’t ask them for money. This was never a protest against the NFL (though they deserve one). This was about bringing the conversation about police violence to forum white America (The chief consumers of Pro football and boosters of police impunity) could not ignore. All the NFL had to do was nothing. Put out a press release saying they respect players first amendment rights and then back sit the fuck down. Instead they tried to suppress the conversation and when that didn’t work they co-opted it and bought it out with pocket change.
  
  The endgame here was the endgame with any other protest. To shout and shout until you are heard. To shove the indignities we face in their faces until they can no longer claim ignorance have to do something about it.
  
  If you want to internalize the white narrative of compromise that’s on you. Maybe a 100 mil is enough for to accept the ongoing state sanctioned murders but for me no amount of money will be enough. My rights and my life aren’t for sale.
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  hillratsTalkinggoat, first and last of his name
  11/30/17 4:41pm
  OK man, I ain’t going to argue with you. Like I said at the beginning of my comment, I feel you and respect your principled stand.
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B'dilliBayMichael Harriot
11/30/17 12:58pm
Is someone like Eric Ried under the impression the NFL is going to fix racism? The whole point of a protest is that you have realistic demands. The NFL giving $100 million to organizations who exist solely to remedy racism seems like a reasonable offer.
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  ARayB'dilliBay
  11/30/17 1:27pm
  “The whole point of a protest is that you have realistic demands,”
  Kap, Reid, and other kneeling players did not demand money from the NFL as they weren’t protesting the NFL itself. People keep using the word ‘protest’ but that’s a loaded, over simplified way to describe the players choosing not stand, hands over hearts for an anthem which does not provide us the equal protection afford to its other citizens.
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  IslaLatinaB'dilliBay
  12/01/17 2:31pm
  The whole point of a protest is that you have realistic demands.
  1. You think it’s “unrealistic” to demand that police stop killing PoC with impunity and zero repercussions??
  2. You’re confusing “negotiation” with “protest” - the point of a negotiation is that you have realistic demands that can be met by the other party (e.g. union negotiations, hostage negotiations, etc)... the whole point of a protest is to elicit needed change.
  When something is so incredibly wrong that people will risk their livelihoods and their lives to protest it, their demands are inevitably NOT going to be deemed “realistic” by the people in charge of the unjust system. The people in charge don’t want to change, which is why actual protest is needed - “asking nicely and resonably” didn’t work...
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