President Trump rightfully understands Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon he honored Saturday, but he's getting it wrong on the National Football protests, says Eugene Scott, identity politics writer for The Fix in the Washington Post.
The president tweeted a video Saturday of him honoring Parks, an African-American who refused to yield her seat to a white person on a Montgomery, Alabama bus in 1955. Her courageous actions led to a boycott and lent impetus to the advancement of civil rights. Trump met Parks at an awards ceremony on Ellis Island in 1986. This weekend, the president said:
“Rosa Parks' legacy continues to inspire our citizens to pursue a better tomorrow and to build a country where every American child — no matter their skin color — can live without fear, dream without limits and take their rightful place in the great story of our nation.”
Scott begrudgingly acknowledged President Trump for honoring the late Parks, but then turned on him with the charge that he "doesn't seem to understand" today's NFL player activists who "are following in the footsteps of Parks. Trump's apparent inconsistency alarmed many activists Saturday."
"Many activists" amounted to just three persons cited in Scott's commentary: actor Jeffrey Wright, activist April Reign and feminist writer Hanna Brooks Olsen.
Olsen's social media post claimed, "If Rosa Parks were alive today, Donald Trump would be blasting her on Twitter and calling her actions disgraceful." Reign angrily posted this sputtering bile: "How. Dare. You. If Rosa Parks had applied to be a tenant in one of your buildings, you would have turned her away. Keep her name out of your filthy, treasonous mouth."
Like so many other media protester apologists, Scott insists the NFL radicals are not doing anything disrespectful:
Despite NFL players explaining in multiple op-eds and interviews the motivations behind their kneeling while the national anthem plays during football games, Trump continues to characterize their actions in a way that is inconsistent with their expressed intent. For a leader who promised to unite America after a divisive campaign filled with racially inflammatory rhetoric, this response has been disappointing to many of the Americans who believe that he has played a major role in the country's ongoing divisions on racial matters.
Scott also asserts that while Trump has revealed he's "capable of understanding the concerns of marginalized communities when he chooses to do so ... the president's refusal to grant NFL players the recognition that he has given to Parks suggests that his actions aren't because he fails to comprehend the magnitude of their protests, but rather that he simply desires not to."
President Trump isn't alone in opposing the protests, which are visually aimed right at the U.S. flag. If that isn't a self-defeating optic for a group of players whose claims about not disrespecting veterans are failing to convince the public, I don't know what is.
Among today's protesters were: Oakland's Marshawn Lynch, who sat; the New York Giants' Olivier Vernon, who knelt; San Francisco's Eric Reid, Marquise Goodwin and Earl Mitchell, who knelt; Los Angeles Charger Russell Okung, who raised his right fist during the national anthem; Miami's Julius Thomas, Kenny Stills and Michael Thomas, who knelt; and Baltimore's Tyus Bowser, who knelt for the first few verses of anthem before standing.
Tennessee's Rishard Matthews earned notoriety this week for his custom-made cleats honoring Colin Kaepernick, but he wasn't even active for today's game and those cleats never made the field! He stayed in the clubhouse during the national anthem. Three of his teammates raised their fists: Brian Orakpo, Jurrell Casey and Wesley Woodyard.
