America is great, but...
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Politics and Activism

America is great, but...

A ponderation on Colin Kaepernick's decision to stand up for the quietly suffering

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America is great, but...
Glogster jessiccadanielle9

The United States of America is a great country. Many people who are born here or who move here get the chance to realize their dreams - chances that they wouldn't find anywhere else. America is thus an extremely diverse society, with rich and poor, young and old, white and colored, ambitious investment bankers and motivated future pop stars all in one place. Bill Gates, a white, upper-class male who became an entrepreneur and founded Microsoft and Viola Davis, a black, lower-class female who became a renowned actress and producer are success stories that co-exist in this country. There are so many diverse example of others making it that people often forget those who aren't even given a chance because of something as minuscule as race and skin tone.

A probable majority of this country does not have to think about these things - about things like going on a run in purposefully bright neon workout clothing so people won't mistaken you for a thug or murderer. Like keeping your pockets empty and hands out in the open so people don't suspect that you are hiding a gun. Like keeping your electronic car keys on you at all times so people won't think you're trying to break into someone else's car. Like not talking in Arabic on a plane because people might think you're a terrorist, etc.

Someone had to do something to bring people's attention to the fact that America is still a country in which many people are oppressed, more often than not, those people being of color. Yes, there are social justice warriors who try to bring attention to these issues everyday, but they are often not heard as loudly or taken as seriously as celebrities. Colin Kaepernick was one such celebrity who realized the amount of influence he had and what he could do to help these forgotten, suffering people. "There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder," he says in his statement as to why he chose to protest by sitting through the national anthem, but many people still think he went crazy and hated the country.

I believe out of all the people who stopped supporting Kaepernick as a football player or 49ers as a team, out of all the people who portrayed him as anti-American and anti-military, an absolute majority, if not all of them, were people who never had to face discrimination and threats on their lives because they had a different skin color. It is hard for someone who is never thought to be a terrorist or a criminal simply because of their skin color to come to terms with the fact that yes, there are people out there dying, going to jail, being bullied, and/or killing themselves for things they have never done and never had any control over.

I once told a friend of mine that she was privileged, partially because she was straight and from a middle-class family, but mostly because she was white, and never had to worry about people objectifying her race as sex objects, socially awkward, nerdy, or worse, terrorists and murderers. Her response to me simply proved this point: "Mmm," she said, "I just don't like being called privileged." For me, it seemed a great privilege to be able to chose whether or not others could call her privileged and whether or not she wanted to identify as it, but she still does not understand why I feel so strongly about these things. I told her that people were dying. I told her that cops were killing innocents, even though they had better options of restricting and containing them. And she didn't want to believe me, because apparently she had never heard of these things.

I told other friends about the less threatening discrimination I receive, of being perceived as an invasive foreigner, a submissive object, a machine for studying and good grades; I told them about the ways my culture is misunderstood and misinterpreted and that I should be allowed to feel offended by these things. Some understood and realized how their white privilege allowed them to be protected from these happenings. Others claimed that they were often discriminated against too, for example when Americans are seen by foreigners as loud and obnoxious or fat and unhealthy. Right, because that totally compares to those who get sexually harassed or assaulted because media portrays them as sexual objects, to others being put in jail for decades because their skin color was somehow a proclamation of guilt, to those who get killed because their skin color was a threat for someone else.

I believe this is why Colin Kaepernick protested. He saw all of these people, mostly suffering silently until news media picks up on a new thing and blasts it everywhere for two days. He saw them and he thought he could change their lives, give them hope and security by sitting alongside them. The United States of America is a great country, but even the greatest country has flaws. How can one claim to be a patriotic citizen, when one ignores all the signs of unhappiness and pain, when one chooses to be blind or deaf to those suffering and dying from discrimination? Some may think Colin Kaepernick is anti-American for sitting through the national anthem, but I would say that those who think such things are the true anti-Americans who refuse to better their nation even when its human lives that are at stake.

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