Kaepernick

Meltdown99

https://twitter.com/w_terrence/status/1146131383510654977

Wonder how he really feels...

HughFreakingDillon

PJ_Soul said:

I don't understand wtf faux outrage is supposed to be... I would think that means it is literally fake, completely contrived, for some ulterior motive. Is that what you're claiming some people are reacting with? That they are literally faking their feelings about this just to... what? Stir up the right? Stir up the left? Both? I feel like their sentiments about it are real, not faked. If they want their feelings about it to be heard by others, that doesn't make it fake, does it?

people dig something up, make it into something it's not, and people react to it because that's what we do now. instead of actually thinking about it, people look at a picture, meant to incite some type of reaction (mostly anger), and people run with it without thinking about it. 

if people didn't know what the betsy ross flag was in 2012, why are they all up in arms about it now? because they are being told what to think it is, and to be mad about it, and they are falling for it. 

I never thought about it until now. And I'm still not affected by it. Why? because I didn't react to it first, and read about it later. 

HughFreakingDillon

Meltdown99 said:

https://twitter.com/w_terrence/status/1146131383510654977

Wonder how he really feels...

i hate that stupid argument. "if you don't like it, leave!". no, if I don't like it, I'll try to change it for the better. 

But I still disagree with him. 

mrussel1

HughFreakingDillon said:

Meltdown99 said:

https://twitter.com/w_terrence/status/1146131383510654977

Wonder how he really feels...

i hate that stupid argument. "if you don't like it, leave!". no, if I don't like it, I'll try to change it for the better. 

But I still disagree with him. 

I hate that argument too.  It's lazy.  

PJ_Soul

mrussel1 said:

PJ_Soul said:

jeffbr said:

mrussel1 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

mrussel1 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

I don't personally care if Obama's level of involvement with his own inauguration decorations (to me that's just giving him a preemptive pass on it if he didn't approve it). it's his inauguration, he should know if he's flying a racist flag behind himself. 

I don't see one of those flags, myself.  

it's the same flag as the nike shoe flag. 

I know.  I don't see a racist flag behind Obama.  And my guess is he didn't either.  

It clearly isn't a racist flag. That is Kaep's faux outrage. He exists to stir the pot.

Is the Betsy Ross flag racist? Nike listened to Colin Kaepernick, but hate group monitors say no, conservatives push back.

 The Anti-Defamation League does not include it in its database of hate symbols. Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow for the ADL's Center on Extremism, said extremist groups have occasionally used it, but the flag is most commonly used by people for patriotic purposes. "We view it as essentially an innocuous historical flag," Pitcavage said. "It's not a thing in the white supremacist movement."

The ADL would be quick to call it out as racist if it actually was. This entire thing is contrived outrage. It's working, I guess. And it is fucking stupid.

"It has been used by some extremist groups as a means of telegraphing a return to more traditionalist (re: predominantly white and male) American ideals. “Under the guise of ‘heritage,’ symbols of early U.S. history have long been adopted by hate groups set on returning to a time when all non-white people were viewed as subhuman and un-American,” says Keegan Hankes, research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). “Historically, these symbols have been used by white supremacists, both to hearken back to a time when black people were enslaved, while also painting themselves as the inheritors of the ‘true’ American tradition.”

So every time a hate group tries to take something from us, we need to let them have it and move on.  No thanks.  

I added to my post.

So what do you suggest? Let's say racists decide to start using this flag more (they likely will), and African Americans really view it as a symbol of hate against them. Are you going to mount the flag on your car and remind those people of slavery and discriminiation against them in the name of protecting that flag from the white supremacists? Or are you going to confront the white supremacists and nationalists/patriots head on and try to get them to stop using the symbols before you do? Me, I think I'll just follow what African Americans think (or other minorities, in the same context). Whatever they like best with shit like this, I'm good with it. Their opinion about it (in reaction to the practices of racists, white nationalists, and "patriots") is the only thing that really matters to me, and yes, that includes things related in the same way to Canada's history (I have already supported the removal of numerous statues and school names in Canada that were deemed inappropriate by First Nations). I'm not about to let random symbols from a largely dirty, deplorable past that nobody ever usually thinks about be more important than the feelings of minority groups who have suffered through history who exist now.

PJ_Soul

jeffbr said:

PJ_Soul said:

mcgruff10 said:

jeffbr said:

mrussel1 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

mrussel1 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

I don't personally care if Obama's level of involvement with his own inauguration decorations (to me that's just giving him a preemptive pass on it if he didn't approve it). it's his inauguration, he should know if he's flying a racist flag behind himself. 

I don't see one of those flags, myself.  

it's the same flag as the nike shoe flag. 

I know.  I don't see a racist flag behind Obama.  And my guess is he didn't either.  

It clearly isn't a racist flag. That is Kaep's faux outrage. He exists to stir the pot.

Is the Betsy Ross flag racist? Nike listened to Colin Kaepernick, but hate group monitors say no, conservatives push back.

 The Anti-Defamation League does not include it in its database of hate symbols. Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow for the ADL's Center on Extremism, said extremist groups have occasionally used it, but the flag is most commonly used by people for patriotic purposes. "We view it as essentially an innocuous historical flag," Pitcavage said. "It's not a thing in the white supremacist movement."

The ADL would be quick to call it out as racist if it actually was. This entire thing is contrived outrage. It's working, I guess. And it is fucking stupid.

Second mic drop. 

To be clear, the Betsy Ross flag is not nearly as recognizable a symbol of white supremacy as, say, the Confederate flag. “This is not a flag I see waving at events or seeing displayed on their websites,” Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Center of Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), tells Rolling Stone. It has, however, been associated with the Patriot Movement, an anti-government, extremist right-wing movement that encompasses smaller fringe movements such as the militia movement, the sovereign citizen movement, and the tax protest movement. (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was highly influenced by militia movement ideology.) The militia movement, says Pitcavage, is the youngest of the three, dating from about the mid-1990s, and has been using the Betsy Ross flag, among other Revolutionary War-era symbols, since its inception. “Because they view themselves as analogous to American revolutionaries, they love to use old flags from that era,” he says, citing the Revolutionary War-era “don’t tread on me” flag as another example. The Betsy Ross flag is apparently so closely identified with the Patriot Movement that until this morning, it was the main image of its Wikipedia page, according to reporter Charles Robinson. (It has since been removed, but is viewable on a cached version of the webpage.)

While the white supremacist movement and the Patriot movement are not synonymous, there is some overlap between the two. The flag has also been used or reinterpreted by groups like the American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa) and Patriot Front, both of which have been classified as hate groups by the SPLC and were founded within the past few years. Pitcavage says that the Knight Riders, a now-defunct West Virginia-based Ku Klux Klan group, at one point required that every chapter of the group had to use either the Confederate flag or the Betsy Ross flag to cover the “altar” during meetings with Klan rituals; most recently, the Betsy Ross flag was depicted in a 2018 flier allegedly distributed in upstate New York for the United Northern & Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which depicts a Klansman on horseback carrying a Confederate flag in one hand and a Betsy Ross flag in another. Such groups “[brand] themselves in the trappings of Americana with the aim of creating a more marketable image for their dedication to creating an all-white nation,” says Hankes.

Well, the current flag is often used by "patriots" as well. But that doesn't mean that it is their symbol. Every iteration of the flag has likely had some scummy group using it as a symbol. But the point is that the Betsy Ross flag is NOT generally considered a symbol of racism by anyone except those looking for a reason to make noise. It is fairly innocuous. This entire thing is much ado 'bout nothing. Except to drive traffic to Nike.

Because that is the CURRENT flag, and wasn't used in slave days. Isn't that obvious?

Now, if this is all a fabricated ad campaign by Nike, including Kaepernick's complaint, that would change things. Otherwise... I think these historical symbols in America are a hot button issue that is actually worth debating. I think it is valid for African Americans to be touchy about American history. It's completely justified. So again, wherever they lean, I'll lean too.

PJ_Soul

mrussel1 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

Meltdown99 said:

https://twitter.com/w_terrence/status/1146131383510654977

Wonder how he really feels...

i hate that stupid argument. "if you don't like it, leave!". no, if I don't like it, I'll try to change it for the better. 

But I still disagree with him. 

I hate that argument too.  It's lazy.  

Agreed. It's an idiotic argument.

jeffbr

PJ_Soul said:

jeffbr said:

PJ_Soul said:

mcgruff10 said:

jeffbr said:

mrussel1 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

mrussel1 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

I don't personally care if Obama's level of involvement with his own inauguration decorations (to me that's just giving him a preemptive pass on it if he didn't approve it). it's his inauguration, he should know if he's flying a racist flag behind himself. 

I don't see one of those flags, myself.  

it's the same flag as the nike shoe flag. 

I know.  I don't see a racist flag behind Obama.  And my guess is he didn't either.  

It clearly isn't a racist flag. That is Kaep's faux outrage. He exists to stir the pot.

Is the Betsy Ross flag racist? Nike listened to Colin Kaepernick, but hate group monitors say no, conservatives push back.

 The Anti-Defamation League does not include it in its database of hate symbols. Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow for the ADL's Center on Extremism, said extremist groups have occasionally used it, but the flag is most commonly used by people for patriotic purposes. "We view it as essentially an innocuous historical flag," Pitcavage said. "It's not a thing in the white supremacist movement."

The ADL would be quick to call it out as racist if it actually was. This entire thing is contrived outrage. It's working, I guess. And it is fucking stupid.

Second mic drop. 

To be clear, the Betsy Ross flag is not nearly as recognizable a symbol of white supremacy as, say, the Confederate flag. “This is not a flag I see waving at events or seeing displayed on their websites,” Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Center of Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), tells Rolling Stone. It has, however, been associated with the Patriot Movement, an anti-government, extremist right-wing movement that encompasses smaller fringe movements such as the militia movement, the sovereign citizen movement, and the tax protest movement. (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was highly influenced by militia movement ideology.) The militia movement, says Pitcavage, is the youngest of the three, dating from about the mid-1990s, and has been using the Betsy Ross flag, among other Revolutionary War-era symbols, since its inception. “Because they view themselves as analogous to American revolutionaries, they love to use old flags from that era,” he says, citing the Revolutionary War-era “don’t tread on me” flag as another example. The Betsy Ross flag is apparently so closely identified with the Patriot Movement that until this morning, it was the main image of its Wikipedia page, according to reporter Charles Robinson. (It has since been removed, but is viewable on a cached version of the webpage.)

While the white supremacist movement and the Patriot movement are not synonymous, there is some overlap between the two. The flag has also been used or reinterpreted by groups like the American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa) and Patriot Front, both of which have been classified as hate groups by the SPLC and were founded within the past few years. Pitcavage says that the Knight Riders, a now-defunct West Virginia-based Ku Klux Klan group, at one point required that every chapter of the group had to use either the Confederate flag or the Betsy Ross flag to cover the “altar” during meetings with Klan rituals; most recently, the Betsy Ross flag was depicted in a 2018 flier allegedly distributed in upstate New York for the United Northern & Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which depicts a Klansman on horseback carrying a Confederate flag in one hand and a Betsy Ross flag in another. Such groups “[brand] themselves in the trappings of Americana with the aim of creating a more marketable image for their dedication to creating an all-white nation,” says Hankes.

Well, the current flag is often used by "patriots" as well. But that doesn't mean that it is their symbol. Every iteration of the flag has likely had some scummy group using it as a symbol. But the point is that the Betsy Ross flag is NOT generally considered a symbol of racism by anyone except those looking for a reason to make noise. It is fairly innocuous. This entire thing is much ado 'bout nothing. Except to drive traffic to Nike.

Because that is the CURRENT flag, and wasn't used in slave days. Isn't that obvious?

Now, if this is all a fabricated ad campaign by Nike, including Kaepernick's complaint, that would change things. Otherwise... I think these historical symbols in America are a hot button issue that is actually worth debating. I think it is valid for African Americans to be touchy about American history. It's completely justified. So again, wherever they lean, I'll lean too.

Sure. But are "they" leaning, or is "he" leaning. Right now I know Kaepernick has an issue with it. Obama didn't. That's 1v1, and I'll default to the guy I trust and respect more. So Obama and Kaep disagree. The ADL and SPLC disagree. It sounds like there isn't any sort of consensus to determine that "they" are leaning. That's kind of my point. This isn't a universally recognized symbol of hate or racism. But it is keeping the Nike brand front and center.

cincybearcat

josevolution said:

If you watch or buy apparel from any sport your contributing to their sky high salaries, I’ve stopped watching all sports except hockey that’s the only one I watch ..

No Shit. I’m ok with paying for my entertainment. 

mickeyrat

PJ_Soul said:

mcgruff10 said:

I was going to bring my kids to a revolutionary war re-enactment this weekend but after a lot of thought I don’t want them to be exposed to that racist flag the colonists will be waving. 

Why not? The racists lose, don't they?

The Crown? Yes the crown your country still swears allegiance to lost....

cincybearcat

dignin said:

mcgruff10 said:

This is crazy.  Now people are up in arms about the original Stars and Stripes?  

I know right. Why do people get so upset when a business makes a business decision that doesn't hurt anyone?

When I read this (the news) I had an initial reaction. Stepped back and thought about it.

1) I don’t care what Nile chooses to do, up to them...but the fact that they backed down when  Kap brought up this point tells me something about them.

2) Initially I thought Kap was an idiot. Then I though, hmmm how is it different than the southern battle flag. Then I thought of the many ways it’s way different and I’m back to Kap being a fucking idiot. 

This Is stupid. The original show looked dumb but I can’t have Kap fucking around and claiming that the original US flag is inherently racist. That’s just not good math. Kap has lost his limelight and looking to get it back.

PJ_Soul

jeffbr said:

PJ_Soul said:

jeffbr said:

PJ_Soul said:

To be clear, the Betsy Ross flag is not nearly as recognizable a symbol of white supremacy as, say, the Confederate flag. “This is not a flag I see waving at events or seeing displayed on their websites,” Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Center of Extremism at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), tells Rolling Stone. It has, however, been associated with the Patriot Movement, an anti-government, extremist right-wing movement that encompasses smaller fringe movements such as the militia movement, the sovereign citizen movement, and the tax protest movement. (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was highly influenced by militia movement ideology.) The militia movement, says Pitcavage, is the youngest of the three, dating from about the mid-1990s, and has been using the Betsy Ross flag, among other Revolutionary War-era symbols, since its inception. “Because they view themselves as analogous to American revolutionaries, they love to use old flags from that era,” he says, citing the Revolutionary War-era “don’t tread on me” flag as another example. The Betsy Ross flag is apparently so closely identified with the Patriot Movement that until this morning, it was the main image of its Wikipedia page, according to reporter Charles Robinson. (It has since been removed, but is viewable on a cached version of the webpage.)

While the white supremacist movement and the Patriot movement are not synonymous, there is some overlap between the two. The flag has also been used or reinterpreted by groups like the American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa) and Patriot Front, both of which have been classified as hate groups by the SPLC and were founded within the past few years. Pitcavage says that the Knight Riders, a now-defunct West Virginia-based Ku Klux Klan group, at one point required that every chapter of the group had to use either the Confederate flag or the Betsy Ross flag to cover the “altar” during meetings with Klan rituals; most recently, the Betsy Ross flag was depicted in a 2018 flier allegedly distributed in upstate New York for the United Northern & Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which depicts a Klansman on horseback carrying a Confederate flag in one hand and a Betsy Ross flag in another. Such groups “[brand] themselves in the trappings of Americana with the aim of creating a more marketable image for their dedication to creating an all-white nation,” says Hankes.

Well, the current flag is often used by "patriots" as well. But that doesn't mean that it is their symbol. Every iteration of the flag has likely had some scummy group using it as a symbol. But the point is that the Betsy Ross flag is NOT generally considered a symbol of racism by anyone except those looking for a reason to make noise. It is fairly innocuous. This entire thing is much ado 'bout nothing. Except to drive traffic to Nike.

Because that is the CURRENT flag, and wasn't used in slave days. Isn't that obvious?

Now, if this is all a fabricated ad campaign by Nike, including Kaepernick's complaint, that would change things. Otherwise... I think these historical symbols in America are a hot button issue that is actually worth debating. I think it is valid for African Americans to be touchy about American history. It's completely justified. So again, wherever they lean, I'll lean too.

Sure. But are "they" leaning, or is "he" leaning. Right now I know Kaepernick has an issue with it. Obama didn't. That's 1v1, and I'll default to the guy I trust and respect more. So Obama and Kaep disagree. The ADL and SPLC disagree. It sounds like there isn't any sort of consensus to determine that "they" are leaning. That's kind of my point. This isn't a universally recognized symbol of hate or racism. But it is keeping the Nike brand front and center.

I don't feel comfortable saying what Obama thinks at all. That photo was from 2012 apparently, and I have no clue what he thought about it then, and have no clue what he thinks about it now. But anyway, they or he, makes no difference to me TBH. Let's wait and find out, but I would say that either way, putting an old slavery-era flag on the back of a Nike was fucking really stupid, if it wasn't done so that this debate happened. I think this debate was absolutely predictable when that shoe was designed. But I'll always side with people who are discriminated against (in this context) over some stupid flag or statue or whatever from the grotesque history of the colonization of North America. I actually think it's reasonable for African Americans and First Nations to find basically everything from the history of white colonization that is stuck to modern things to be a painful or maddening reminder of what it did to them. Even as a white person, I do definitely think about that factor when I think about any of our history. And no, that doesn't mean I think history should be ignored, before someone accuses me of that, haha. I think it should never be forgotten, and if it's the context of that actual history there is no issue at all. I'm just talking about modern uses of historical symbols and what they may mean today.

mickeyrat

Someone should tell the record number of black women who graduated from west point this year, that the flag they will follow is a racist symbol.

we should also go house to house to seize the folded flags held by the familes of all the men and women who were buried under that flag.

mrussel1

mickeyrat said:

Someone should tell the record number of black women who graduated from west point this year, that the flag they will follow is a racist symbol.

we should also go house to house to seize the folded flags held by the familes of all the men and women who were buried under that flag.

I have a folded one in the dining room.  

PJ_Soul

mickeyrat said:

Someone should tell the record number of black women who graduated from west point this year, that the flag they will follow is a racist symbol.

we should also go house to house to seize the folded flags held by the familes of all the men and women who were buried under that flag.

Has anyone ever suggested that any flag be seized from people?? This is a debate about symbols used publicly and/or currently, not about controlling what people do privately.

mrussel1

PJ_Soul said:

mrussel1 said:

PJ_Soul said:

jeffbr said:

mrussel1 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

mrussel1 said:

HughFreakingDillon said:

I don't personally care if Obama's level of involvement with his own inauguration decorations (to me that's just giving him a preemptive pass on it if he didn't approve it). it's his inauguration, he should know if he's flying a racist flag behind himself. 

I don't see one of those flags, myself.  

it's the same flag as the nike shoe flag. 

I know.  I don't see a racist flag behind Obama.  And my guess is he didn't either.  

It clearly isn't a racist flag. That is Kaep's faux outrage. He exists to stir the pot.

Is the Betsy Ross flag racist? Nike listened to Colin Kaepernick, but hate group monitors say no, conservatives push back.

 The Anti-Defamation League does not include it in its database of hate symbols. Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow for the ADL's Center on Extremism, said extremist groups have occasionally used it, but the flag is most commonly used by people for patriotic purposes. "We view it as essentially an innocuous historical flag," Pitcavage said. "It's not a thing in the white supremacist movement."

The ADL would be quick to call it out as racist if it actually was. This entire thing is contrived outrage. It's working, I guess. And it is fucking stupid.

"It has been used by some extremist groups as a means of telegraphing a return to more traditionalist (re: predominantly white and male) American ideals. “Under the guise of ‘heritage,’ symbols of early U.S. history have long been adopted by hate groups set on returning to a time when all non-white people were viewed as subhuman and un-American,” says Keegan Hankes, research analyst for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). “Historically, these symbols have been used by white supremacists, both to hearken back to a time when black people were enslaved, while also painting themselves as the inheritors of the ‘true’ American tradition.”

So every time a hate group tries to take something from us, we need to let them have it and move on.  No thanks.  

I added to my post.

So what do you suggest? Let's say racists decide to start using this flag more (they likely will), and African Americans really view it as a symbol of hate against them. Are you going to mount the flag on your car and remind those people of slavery and discriminiation against them in the name of protecting that flag from the white supremacists? Or are you going to confront the white supremacists and nationalists/patriots head on and try to get them to stop using the symbols before you do? Me, I think I'll just follow what African Americans think (or other minorities, in the same context). Whatever they like best with shit like this, I'm good with it. Their opinion about it (in reaction to the practices of racists, white nationalists, and "patriots") is the only thing that really matters to me, and yes, that includes things related in the same way to Canada's history (I have already supported the removal of numerous statues and school names in Canada that were deemed inappropriate by First Nations). I'm not about to let random symbols from a largely dirty, deplorable past that nobody ever usually thinks about be more important than the feelings of minority groups who have suffered through history who exist now.

Well I'm not planning on making it Custer's last stand.  But none of us would even be thinking about it if it wasn't for Kap.  So in a way, he has created some sense of 'awareness' which leads to some more splitting of the country, which is bad.  Like I said, I think we would all be better served if he used his power to try to unite and marginalize them, taking back the symbol, not splitting away.  Obama tried to do that with the country, I think.  

mickeyrat

PJ_Soul said:

mickeyrat said:

Someone should tell the record number of black women who graduated from west point this year, that the flag they will follow is a racist symbol.

we should also go house to house to seize the folded flags held by the familes of all the men and women who were buried under that flag.

Has anyone ever suggested that any flag be seized from people?? This is a debate about symbols used publicly and/or currently, not about controlling what people do privately.

perhaps the greater debate should be had around the crass commercialisation of these symbols for profit. Not just by this attempt by Nike. but others as well.

brianlux

I haven't read all of the 5,432 new Kaep posts put up today but just from the ones I've glanced at, I have to say I'm surprised at the reaction to Kaepernick's efforts to shine a light on some of our less than illustrious history.  Do all of you who disapprove of his actions also hate Howard Zinn's work?  I'm baffled.

PJ_Soul

mickeyrat said:

PJ_Soul said:

mickeyrat said:

Someone should tell the record number of black women who graduated from west point this year, that the flag they will follow is a racist symbol.

we should also go house to house to seize the folded flags held by the familes of all the men and women who were buried under that flag.

Has anyone ever suggested that any flag be seized from people?? This is a debate about symbols used publicly and/or currently, not about controlling what people do privately.

perhaps the greater debate should be had around the crass commercialisation of these symbols for profit. Not just by this attempt by Nike. but others as well.

I think you have a pretty good point.

PJ_Soul

brianlux said:

I haven't read all of the 5,432 new Kaep posts put up today but just from the ones I've glanced at, I have to say I'm surprised at the reaction to Kaepernick's efforts to shine a light on some of our less than illustrious history.  Do all of you who disapprove of his actions also hate Howard Zinn's work?  I'm baffled.

Yeah, I with you on this one Brian. I don't understand the kickback really. I mean, I do because people have explained it... I'm just surprised they're feeling that way, all things considered.