William C. Rhoden once wrote award-winning sports columns for The New York Times and he authored the book Forty Million Dollar Slaves. Writing for The Undefeated, a subsidiary blog of ESPN, he claims slavery is alive in America, but freedom is not, as evidenced by the plight of Colin Kaepernick.
"The apparent blackballing of Kaepernick is not about football. This is about the erosion of the American Soul filtered through the prism of football," Rhoden asserts.
Writing on the heels of the Fourth of July, Rhoden writes that this holiday fascinates him "as we commemorate the revolution that resulted in our nation’s independence from England and the creation of the world’s self-proclaimed great democracy. The glitch is that the United States was founded as a slave-holding nation, and the idea of a democracy constructed on the backs of enslaved Africans is an unresolved dilemma that has kept the United States in a spiritual vise grip to this day. We won our independence, but as a nation we’re still not free."
His post includes quotes by Jonathan Walton, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity, to support his theory that America is hardly the land of the free. “Part of the reason that we’re not free is that we have refused to acknowledge the things that imprison us. We’re imprisoned by economic inequality; this nation has always been imprisoned by economic inequality; it was founded on economic inequality.”
The two quickly got onto the subject of Kaepernick to make their points about so-called "systemic racism" in America.
Rhoden alleges the former member of the San Francisco 49ers' protest against the national anthem was a "silent, peaceful protest aimed at unpunished police violence against the black community, but also about systemic structural racism that facilitates such behavior."
No evidence supports the claim that racism among public safety officers is systemic.
Walton said Kaepernick exposed our freedom as a lie:
Kaepernick dared to give voice to his own humanity. His greatest sin is that he refused to let us live in the lie of our own freedom. We keep burying anything that provides evidence of our contradictions. We sweep it under the rug, hide it in the closet.”
Rhoden wrote, "The United States won its independence, but we’re not free." Talking out of both sides of his mouth, he says that Kaepernick is not free, but yet "enjoys a vast stage" to state his opinions. Absolutely. Kaepernick is a millionaire American traveling the world, speaking his mind and trashing his homeland on foreign soil. In the tradition of the 44th president.
Kaepernick has pointed out that he is holding the United States accountable, as a modern-day patriot, Rhoden writes:
NFL owners apparently don’t want whatever Kaepernick has — consciousness — to spread. Kaepernick is merely acting in the great tradition that fueled the Revolutionary War: dissent. A significant part of the public seems to have become anesthetized to the unnecessary use of force by police and perhaps to the idea that comfort may come at the expense of a fellow citizen.
Walton went way out there with a wild assessment of U.S. history:
That’s the history of America. My freedom is dependent upon somebody else’s enslavement; my freedom is based on somebody else being terrorized; my safety is dependent on somebody else being stopped and frisked, somebody else being patrolled by police constantly.
According to Rhoden, Kaepernick has already won, even if he is not signed this season. "His stature grows with each day he remains unsigned. "There is an entire community out there that has embraced this brother,” Walton said. “The more he’s marginalized by certain forces, the more he’s going to find new communities of strength. When it’s all said and done, we’re going to be talking about Kaepernick in this moment.”
After earlier writing about the myth of freedom, Rhoden then turns 180 degrees and says, "Kaepernick should consider taking his time about getting back into the NFL. He will never be as free as he is at this moment, with no team to yank his chain, no team owner to threaten him. ... Colin Kaepernick is a lightning rod and a conscious bearer who is enjoying the best of both worlds, freedom and independence." This 1-percenter so "threatened" by team owners was paid millions of dollars to play a child's game.
“I believe strongly that when this is all said and done, Kaepernick will end up being the athlete who defines this historical moment,” Walton predicted. “We’ll be celebrating him the same way we celebrate Ali.”
So then, this blather was much ado about nothing. At first we're told Kaepernick exposed our freedom as a lie. But then we're told he's actually free. This is further proof that the liberal mind is often a cloud of high-minded, yet hollow, rhetoric.
