TO KNEEL, OR NOT TO KNEEL, THAT IS NOT THE QUESTION!

What is it about human beings that orchestrated evil can so easily distract us from protecting the critically important ideas and actions that make and keep us human? We live in America, a land created under democracy, to live together, care for one another, and to respect the individual rights of liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness! Where did we go wrong then, when a young, black, professional athlete is subjected to anger, hatred, and loss of his job, because he knelt instead of standing at a football game during the national anthem, purely to exercise his freedom to protest against the long-held racial disparities inherent in many of our American systems?

I am of course speaking about Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49er quarterback who once led that team to the Super Bowl following the 2012/2013 season.  He took a knee to protest against police brutality and racial inequality directed toward people of color in this country. He did so knowing that it might, and in fact did, place his football playing career in jeopardy. Now this young man who went 16 for 28 and threw for 302 yards in the Super Bowl, is being vilified and having his talent questioned as a lame excuse for why he is not currently on a National Football League (NFL) roster. Give me a break!! Is this really our America?

As the son of a former Chairman of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) who served under President Gerald R. Ford, it is in my DNA to speak out when I see evidence of civil rights injustice. My father, Lowell Perry Sr., was also an NFL player and coach with the Pittsburgh Steelers, who besides being the first African-American coach in the NFL during the modern era, dedicated his life to fighting for those who didn’t have a voice.  So I refuse to stand by and be a spectator as we continue to witness the efforts of elements within our country, dodge uncomfortable issues impacting American citizens who happen to look like me. They instead attempt to distract the public with dog-whistles and even asinine petitions that only serve a political agenda of division, the likes of which I have never seen in my lifetime. It is my hope that those who love this country as I do, share in my frustration, and are willing to do something about it once and for all.

Those in positions with the authority to change unfair discriminatory systems, should be offering up remedies, rather than encouraging the destructive division which continues to be a stain on the national character of America.  The country would be much better served by heeding the recent words of President George W. Bush in which he unequivocally opined, “Our identity as a nation, unlike other nations, is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. ... This means that people from every race, religion, and ethnicity can be full and equally American." "It means that bigotry and white supremacy, in any form, is blasphemy against the American creed,” the former president said.

These unholy efforts to divide and control, including a disturbing uptick in intentional voter suppression and violence against minorities, have unfortunately been effective in preventing attempts to bring forth viable policies to fix this ongoing embarrassment in the land of the free and home of the brave. Believe me, there is nothing brave about shooting an unarmed man in the back.

What is truly sad is that the purveyor of this charade to ignore these inconvenient truths is the one person who is supposed to be an advocate for ALL Americans – the current President of the United States. His feigned indignation over peaceful protests to demand action to rectify a long history of the violation of the civil rights of people of color, compared to his excusing the actions of the “fine people” shouting “Jews will not replace us” while marching with weapons brandished, and torches blazing, would be laughable if this tacit encouragement of animus toward “the other” wasn’t putting our country on a dangerous path towards another civil war.  Makes the unofficial moniker of “leader of the free world” a bit ironic, does it not? 

This missive is an expression of my First Amendment rights, in hopes that people who actually believe in freedom, will finally pay attention, and move this country away from the false narrative being foisted upon the public by people in power who should know better.  In this country, we have the right to be heard, and those concerns should be treated with the proper respect to which we are entitled as a citizen of this great nation. Not only is that our constitutional right, it is also a matter of human decency. 

The lack of courage, compassion and empathy coming out of the White House on seemingly a daily basis is simply staggering.  One need only look to the actual policies and operations being rolled back by attorney general Jeff Sessions that are supposed to protect people.  Not funding and properly staffing the Justice Department to enforce civil rights laws, or to prevent and pursue domestic terrorists who are responsible for far more American deaths than illegal immigrants is either evidence of incompetence, or something far more sinister.  Of course the divisive verbal assaults so callously flouted about by the president on Twitter speak for themselves as to their intent to divide.  

Those who choose to hypocritically wrap themselves in the American flag and wax nostalgic over our Constitution, must also embrace the fact that the document emphatically states that all Americans are entitled to equal protection under the law. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” ALL men and women. These truths have regrettably not yet been self-evident for people of color in this country.  Most of the men and women who so gallantly fight and die for this nation, do so not for the right to salute a flag, but rather to protect the freedoms that are supposed to be guaranteed to all by the Constitution. To demand that people show blind loyalty to a symbol is the stuff of autocratic regimes like North Korea.  

How to actually protect those self-evident truths is what we should really be addressing together as a nation. Not this false narrative currently being perpetrated by the president.  It is a thinly veiled bait and switch we are being subjected to in an effort to turn the national discourse to one more about the national anthem and the flag, rather than addressing the real elephant in the room. This has never been about disrespecting our country, our veterans, or the flag. The so-called Fourth Estate, the press, must continue to keep this discussion on message, even in the face of the incessant First Amendment meddling coming directly from the White House via Twitter, or from the press room podium of the minister of disinformation, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. While the media is definitely far from perfect, fact checkers continue to expose the parties who continue to be most dishonest with the American public. Yet we the people still allow ourselves to be distracted by petty machinations which are clearly not about patriotism, but rather shameless pandering to a political base. 

This to kneel or not to kneel facade is about enacting policies that would actually ensure equal protection under the law for all people. If we fail to protect voting rights for instance, and actually try to make it more difficult for you and I to vote through bad ideas like the so-called voter fraud commission, inadequately fund the Justice Department in areas that oversee civil rights, and cut funding to enhancements in community policing, can we really blame peaceful protesters for speaking out against such injustices? 

I can almost guarantee you that had the president come out and demanded earnest efforts to address the serious issues many NFL players and others have been trying to call attention to regarding the mistreatment of people of color in this country, rather than berating them in a public fashion, kneeling during the anthem at sporting events would have ceased a long time ago. Unfortunately, it appears as though finding solutions to the legitimate concerns American citizens are peacefully expressing has degenerated into trying to keep certain people in their place. Yes I said it, keep certain people in their place.  While they indeed have a very visible platform from which to bring important issues to light, this battle for human decency cannot continue to fall on the shoulders of professional athletes and celebrities alone. It is time for us "ordinary" citizens to grab the baton and begin to bring a heightened sense of urgency, and righteous indignation to this fight.

Very few of us were fooled by the carefully orchestrated antics of Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones when he disingenuously knelt with players prior to a Monday Night Football contest. He proved that his heart was not in it, when he came out in lock step with the president only a couple of weeks later, and demanded that his players stand during the anthem or be benched. Thankfully, the NFL refused to take the position of compelling players to stand during the anthem.  

If Jones and other owners are truly serious about supporting their players, it will take more than a few meetings with them to “better understand” where they are coming from to prove it. Believe me, these owners already know full well what the legitimate complaints are, and the players certainly don’t need these white businessmen to interpret for the public what the motivation is behind their peaceful protests.  Current and former players like Malcom Jenkins, Eric Reid, Donte Stallworth, and many others are doing just fine in that regard if only some of us would open up our minds, and actually listen to what they are saying and feeling, rather than falling victim to the political sleight of hand designed to squelch their dissent. 

NFL owners claim to value their employees and what is important to them. In an effort to curry influence, many owners have contributed great sums of money to governors, state legislators, and even to the current occupant of the White House.  A true show of guts and serious commitment would be for them to put some of that influence to good use, and make sure that the concerns of the American citizens they employ, as well as many of the fans who support their teams through ticket sales, television ratings, and logo wear, are actually addressed, and acted upon.  So, call the president, congressmen, senators, governors, state legislators, and demand action from these elected officials who are supposed to be working for us. To use the admonition of fictional character, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from the movie Full Metal Jacket, “Sound off like you’ve got a pair!”

Mr. President, you claim to be a leader. Then do your job and set the proper tone for protecting the rights of U. S. citizens rather than attacking them.  Stop all of the careless chatter about flags and the anthem, and instead admonish members of your cabinet and the Congress to show some spine, and do something to rectify the destructive injustices still poisoning this country. Guess what? You might even be loudly applauded were you to spearhead some true progress in race relations in this country. This is an area of your presidency which continues to be sorely lacking. Stop with the convenient use of the Second Amendment when you want to beat people over the head with the Constitution.  You argue with great passion about the right to own weapons of mass murder, but are as quiet as a church mouse when it comes to defending the First Amendment with equal fervor. There is a reason why the Founding Fathers placed them in the specific order in which they are written.

We citizens must continue to enlist the support and voice of those in the celebrity realm who possess the ability to reach large numbers of people through social media and other networks. Organized press conferences like the one I remember from years ago when some of the greatest athletes of their era, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Bill Russell, Jim Brown, and others, called a special press conference to demand action to address many of the same injustices still being fought against today. The public needs to be duly educated on the real issues in order to prevent the continuing insertion of the flim-flam narrative being served up by high profile dividers which has become more annoying than flies at a family reunion picnic. 

Colin, what you began in 2016 has served its purpose, and we thank you. Good luck in your efforts to pursue a return to the field.  You are indeed talented enough to help any number of teams in the NFL, even after this extended and undeserved hiatus. It is now time however for this collective of concerned citizens whom you have inspired, to graduate from kneeling on the fields and courts of athletic competition, and stand up tall to exclaim with a loud, unified voice to those in power at federal, state, and local levels, that the people will no longer be ignored.  To use the words of Howard Beal from the movie Network, “We’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore!”

But we have to do this together, and not allow ourselves to be played so easily by those who seek to keep us apart. President Barack Obama rightly condemned the “politics of division” which has reached a fever pitch in this country over the past two years.  So happy to see this American patriot, and true statesman speaking out again. He captured the frustrations of many in saying “some of the politics we see now, we thought we put that to bed. That’s folks looking 50 years back.” “It’s the 21st century, not the 19th century,” he lamented.  

Imagine high profile pro athletes, celebrities, television personalities, and other luminaries of all colors and creeds, enlisting their respective followers to inundate elected officials from the president on down, and demand that they stop the partisan bickering, and address the concerns of their constituents. We could start with cities that have professional sports teams, and in partnership with local residents, speak up at press conferences, congressional hearings, town halls, City Hall, and perhaps culminating in a new historic march on Washington to protest the gross inaction of elected officials in addressing racial problems that have no place in these United States of America. That is what you should do if you seriously want to make America great again. 

There are many things that need to be addressed that continue to impede the unalienable rights all citizens are entitled to. Let’s start with just a few of these:

·       Restore full power to the Voting Rights Act. This is a no brainer that along with also ending the unfair practice of gerrymandering, a practice geared to unfairly get and keep power, for no other purpose than to allow elected officials to push ideologies with no actual mandate from constituents.

·       Disband the sham Voter Fraud Commission. The data supports that suppressing the vote of seniors and people of color, is much more prevalent in this country than the fantasy of fraud. We should be making it easier to vote, not more difficult.

·       Fix the broken criminal justice system that unfairly targets and incarcerates people of color at a disproportionate rate, has institutional disparities in sentencing, and makes it difficult for poor people to get bail as they await their day in court.

·       Properly fund and staff the U. S. Justice Department to build the necessary capacity needed to properly enforce civil rights laws, and ensure equality for all citizens.

·       Increase community policing and diversity, equity, and inclusion training.

·       Get civics back into the schools so that people can truly know what their rights are, and how the co-equal branches of government are supposed to work. This is an especially important part of the education of young people if they are to become fully engaged citizens, as well as help us all to recognize attempts at imposing the form of authoritarian government the framers of the Constitution rejected when we declared independence as a nation.

This is not about the worship of symbols or whether Colin Kaepernick deserves to be back in the league. We can’t get distracted about those kinds of things when the root cause of injustice perpetrated against some of our fellow Americans continues to go untreated. We all will benefit from getting out of the "band aid" business, and on to demanding the cure. As Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr so eloquently stated in his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Finally, you may be asking yourself, why should I care?  Because creating a better world for our children and grandchildren should be a cause worth fighting for. America needs to live up to its promises to all of her citizens, especially those young people coming up.  This should be something that all people can agree on regardless of their political or religious affiliation, race, creed, etc. Any thinking person with a shred of human decency should be all in on this deal simply on basic principle.  I suggest this new litmus test for decisions being thought about in Washington D.C. and in state houses around the country – will it benefit our young people who will eventually inherit and lead this country?  If we really believe that children are our future, then we need to act like it by standing up to injustice. This nonsensical game being played now by the president and others, is an embarrassment, and is doing a disservice to our next generation. Did I get it right Colin?

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