It's Only a Game

At a time when the world seems to be spinnin' hopelessly out of control,
There's deceivers an' believers an' old in-betweeners,
That seem to have no place to go
--Hands on the Wheel, 
Willie Nelson

People forget
Forget they're hiding
Behind an eminence front
Eminence front, it's a put on
--Eminence Front,
The Who

And I don't know why I have to make a song.
Everybody talks about a new world in the morning.
New world in the morning takes so long
--New World in the Morning,
Roger Whittaker

Singing' don't worry 'bout a thing
'Cause every little thing gonna be alright
--Three Little Birds,
Bob Marley
______________________

This is hardly a news story; not by a long chork. But it's what suffices today.

Ranger and I do not run to the latest media brouhaha, but this one is tangentially of local interest, so we will deconstruct it.

Black football players are kneeling again this week a la Kaepernick. It seems some sort of black-white provocation, and surely the media and the Tweeters are giving it legs. 

What is the proximal story, and what is distal?

Proximally, the United States saw an increase in media coverage of black interaction with the police over the eight years of the Obama administration. Concurrent with our now-ubiquitous social media feeds, beatings and shootings of blacks were uploaded in real-time, usually with no back story; certainly, no vetted back story. (That's the way they do it, today.)

The predictable reaction was increased social unrest, specifically in epicenters of racial violence. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement was hatched. 

And bi-racial footballer Colin Kaepernick grabbed some ink by kneeling before his games. Kaepernick cribbed his move from religious University of Florida footballer Tim Tebow, who took to "Tebowing" before games in a petition to his Creator to keep him and his fellows safe during the game (and hopefully, to make all the viewers happy.)

Genuflecting is a position in the mode of solemnity before one's God. What this reverential position otherwise has to do with a prosperous footballer is not clear. It seems like so much grandstanding. Yes, you too can have your 15 minutes of fame.

Before whom are they genuflecting, and why?

So what is behind the Kaepernick's addition to the sorrows? He must feel badly that his unknown black father was a "shoot-and-scoot" kind of guy, his biological mother's baby daddy abandoning his destitute mother before Mr. Kaepernick was born. He was later adopted by a white family.

The reality must hurt, and it reasonable to assume that the footballer would seek for an answer to such despicable behavior. None can know the answer, but the charitable among us look backwards, to generational insults for explanation. 

Perhaps it was the selling out of Colin's ancestors by fellow tribesmen to European slave traders in a long-forgotten African past. Perhaps, the experience of relatives being slaves in America.

Whatever the genesis of his father's behavior, kneeling says, "This is an implacable Mobius strip" from which we may not exit.

It says, "This legacy of dysfunction is an ever-widening gyre, destined to continue playing itself out beyond me. I bow in sorrow before the inevitiblity."

But who in our nation has not known sorrow? 

Our Native Americans have reason for sorrow. So does the Vietnamese Army officer we know who spent 10 years in a re-education camp and took another ten making it over to the U.S. (He is now working in a restaurant kitchen.) 

Japanese spent time in internment camps during WW II. Jewish people were used as slave labor unto death less than a century ago in Nazi Germany, and were not welcomed by the U.S. as refugees in their time of dire need. A friend has interviewed Rwandan Masssacre survivors who carry on. We have reader at RAW whose family was touched by the Armenian Genocide.

And so it goes. What distinguishes one from the other? How does on hierarchicalize? 

I submit it is our response alone that dignifies and provides salvation to the former victim. One must choose for ascendence and life rather than blame and anger.

Meanwhile, the kneelers do nothing exalted, bring nothing uplifting to our consciousness.

In any event, the kneeling is a depressing sight, especially coming as it does from a man who was fortunate enough to have people lift him up in life after his unfortunate beginning, and who was then earning an eight-figure annual income. 

It seems like a gesture of solidarity, but does it comport with the facts? Florida State University had a decent black sports role model a few years back in Charlie Ward who went on to finance youth mentor leadership camps post-career (in the days before FSU players became better known for stealing clothes from department store, lobsters from Publix and raping young women.)

Or look at footballer Knowshon Moreno, who was photographed crying during the National Anthem.  He said he was, "excited", "blessed" and "privileged" to play this game,

Gratitude and generosity are the only positions from which one may reasonably expect to generate positive change.

But you must have the example, the imagination, to see that charity is a finer way to effect change than is an impotent gesture of solidarity. When one is gifted with largesse, charity become justice. It is there where Kaepernick et al. fail.

In any event, football  is a sporting event. People tire of the ceaseless calls for atonement, the politicization of everything. There has to be a place to get away, to celebrate good-natured rivalries, even if just for a few hours. 

If the kneelers want to be political, let them enter politics. The pay isn't that good (unless you like Tallahassee's Andrew Gillum, currently under FBI investigation for graft.)

A more sure route for a sports hero with bucks to make a difference is to funnel some of that money into school programs, to ensure young men and women can learn another way. I personally know of two non-profits making a real difference in this arena. 

10-year Army veteran Vincent Hunt's "Creator's Camp" is helping young people develop and realize their dreams, teaching them skills for becoming future intra- or entrepreneurs.

Another, Wings for Kids, is an estimable after-school program now in three states. They told me they would come to Florida if someone would invite them.

To the footballers: you don't have to kneel. You can make a positive difference.

I'll hook you up. It'll be dope, I promise.

The Armed Citizen

Can you hear and do you care and
Can't you see we must be free to
Teach your children what you believe in
Make a world that we can live in
--Teach Your Children, CSN&Y
___________________

Since we are in Florida and guns and police are occasional topics, Ranger will address the furore surrounding the 26 Feb 12 death of a 17-year-old black youth in the central Florida town of Sanford.

First to the hagiography of Trayvon Martin and concomitant vilification of his killer, Zimmerman. [Anything that follows is not to justify murder, if that needs be said.]

An associate of Ranger's in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) commented this morning to him that Trayvon Martin's police file has been sealed. We know that Martin was in Sanford because he was expelled from his South Florida school for as-yet unverified offense(s). So what we do know is, both participants in this engagement had rap sheets. Neither were lily white when it comes to their experience with the law.

Another fact is that thousands of black / white /brown /yellow people shoot and kill thousands of other black / white / brown and yellow people every year in the U.S. Can they all be hate crimes?

The exact statistics are hard to come by; a rough estimate is 30,000 firearm deaths in the U.S. per year, with almost half of those being suicides. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC),the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) all release their own stats; the FBI also tabulates justifiable homicides separate from murders. For instance, in 2005, there were 337 justifiable, fatal shoots by the LEOs and 143 by private citizens.

Since this is a criminal investigation, the general public can have no idea into which category this killing falls. It doesn't make anyone smarter or more liberal to side with the black youth over the late 20's Hispanic in the absence of all the data. However, it does appear to make some people feel better to slot themselves with one over the other. Why would that be? Do liberals suffer a higher collective guilt over past treatment of black people than we do over the treatment of Hispanics? If so, why is that?

We suggest if you really sympathize with the plight of blacks, you back it up with equal concern over every blight facing the black community in America, namely:

• What are you doing about the disproportionate rate of sexually transmitted disease (STD's) -- especially AIDs -- in the black community? According to Zack Burgess of the Philidelphia Tribune:

"African Americans represent one-half of the new HIV infections, those living with HIV and those who succumb to it each year in the United States. We also have higher rates for other STDs. Not to mention that Blacks represent 50% of the 2.8 million new Chlamydia infections and our infection rates for Gonorrhea and Syphilis are 16 and 23 times those of whites respectively."

"Nowhere is this impact greatest than in young people, especially young women. A recent CDC study estimated that 48% of black adolescent girls in the United States had at least one STD. Moreover, many are unaware of it."

• As of 2008, the U.S. Bureau of Justice estimated there were over 846,000 Black men in prison, making up 40.2% of all inmates in the system at large. More black men are now in prison than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began.

• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in 2010, 25 percent of all students and nearly 40 percent of black and Hispanic kids fail to graduate on time; the dropout rate is slightly higher for Hispanics than for blacks.

• About 25% of the U.S. Army is black (though a much smaller percentage join front line combat units.)

• Black women have the highest teen pregnancy rates of any demographic @ 117 per 1,000 women aged 15–19 -- over twice the rate for non-Hispanic whites (46 per 1,000)

• African Americans have 2.4 times the infant mortality rate as non-Hispanic whites. They are four times as likely to die as infants due to complications related to low birth weight as compared to non-Hispanic white infants.

• In 2004, the homicide rate among black victims in the United States was 18.71 per 100,000. In comparison, the overall national homicide rate was 4.86 per 100,000 and the national homicide rate for whites was 2.97 per 100,000.

• While African Americans comprise 13.5% of the U.S. Population, 43% of all murder victims in 2007 were African American, 93.1% of whom were killed were African Americans (Black on Black Crime Coalition.)

Do you know these statistics? Do you care? If you think Trayvon is some kind of aberration, than you do not, and your wailing and gnashing of teeth is fallow and will flame out once the next new outrage is fed to you. If you do not care about the reality girding this discrete episode of violence, you can save your bile.

Maybe it is just like those adverts for the World Health Organizations that solicit funds for children with bloated bellies. Kids are cute and we feel sorry for them. We would turn away if the ads featured adults with festering sores and vermin surrounding them. It feeds our egos to have the little picture in our wallet of "our" Third World kid"

Ditto the way the press is marketing the Martin-Zimmerman fight: We see the latter's mug shot, but the former's smiling, pre-17-year-old face. We envision laughter and Skittle-eating Trayvon, and the lurking vigilante, Zimmerman. We do not see the scowling, hooded Trayvon or the one sporting his gold rack, because that would plant a seed of doubt in our minds, and the press and your ego trafficks in simple black and white.

Outrage can feel cathartic, but to what end?

Next: The Armed Citizen II: Race in America