Kaeptain Amerikkka
America’s Least Wanted
Warning: Forgive me while I willingly wallow in my blackness for just a minute. I promise I’ll get out eventually because even this pool has its issues (I’ll save that for another day though).
Let me ask you a few questions. Do you think racism is bad? Do you even think it exists? If you answered “yes” to those questions then let’s proceed. If not, I have no following words for you. Now, if you think racism is bad it should be stopped and/or opposed right? I mean isn’t the opposite of bad good? And doesn’t opposition mean resistance? Cool. So if you’re upset with Colin Kaepernick for going against the problem, or happy that he’s still not employed, then that means you’re apart of the problem.
“Now, what’s so bad about the national anthem?”, you ask. “Thats not supporting racism — that’s merely respecting your country!”
Hold on a sec there, my patriotic friend.
Let me ask you another question. If black people always went with the country and “respected” it and all its morals, would we be having this conversation right now (rather, would you be reading this)? Would I even have the right to voice this? If you answered “no” to those questions then let’s proceed. If not, I have no following words for you. Let’s face it: if black people always respected this country and never resisted, I’d be a slave right now: right or wrong? Wouldn’t I be 3/5’s of a person still? Maybe I’d be upgraded to 4/5’s if the powers that be decided so. Racism was etched early in the minds of this country’s inhabitants: slave masters, slaves, and citizens alike. We (African Americans) had to rebel at some point though, right? At some point didn’t we have to “disrespect” the country by going against the grain? Didn’t we have to go against what was institutionally correct? How much love/respect do you think we had for the country back then anyway? Sure we did what we had to do for a time period — we followed the rules, obeyed the laws, went with the flow. How much love/respect do you think we had for the country? If you answered “yes” to those questions (and “not very much” to the last two) then let’s proceed. If not, I have no following words for you.
So if you’re reading up to this point you agree that we had to rebel and stand up for ourselves along with the support of others. Now, I can only imagine the opinions of those back then who opposed what slaves, rebels, and civil rights activists were doing.
“What are they doing?! They’re disrespecting the country!”
“This is how it’s always been — they can’t change that.”
“This country feeds them and provides for them a place to stay. How dare they!”
These were people that were INSTITUTIONALLY convinced that African Americans were second class citizens and that slavery, racism, and neglecting black civil rights were a part of the fabric of the country they loved so much. Juxtapose that with people today that say Colin is “disrespecting the country”, “disrespecting the men and women that fight for our country”, or an even better one, “disrespecting a country that’s providing for him and paying him millions”. That last one is the craziest one to me. You give a man millions and you expect him to just shutup and play because he “got a family to feed“? Sounds like million-dollar slavery to me.
Sorry that the football field is not his “sanctuary“. I’m talking to you Ray Lewis. (By the way, was this considered praise and worship for you?)
So you have these country-loving, patriotic, military-reverent “Americans” that are just defending their country. I mean who’s surprised — they’ve been drilled with the idea of respecting their country since they were in elementary school and had to “pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, with LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.” (All caps for everything I found funny, but I digress.)
Anyways, before we REALLY knew about the country as 5 & 6 yr olds, we mindlessly repeated those words. Shoot, we couldn’t even spell ‘indivisible’ let alone pronounce it — “indvble”. We said the allegiance as haphazardly as we said the alphabet (special s/o to “elemeno p”). That’s when it dawned on me. If you go to grade school from k-12, and get to school every day on time (s/o 12th grade), and stand up every time, you have pledged your allegiance to this country TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED SIXTY times during (arguably?) the most developmental years of your life.
I haven’t even gotten to those that join the military, have family in it, or have been around it in some way. I have had the fortunate opportunity to work for a company that specifically serves military members; I also work for the government today with many co-workers who served. I have served military members. I work with military members. Veterans. My sister is in the military. My baby sister. In Japan. So if you think that I completely utterly disrespect America or hate it or only think it has nothing to offer but racism and prejudice to African Americans, you’re sadly mistaken.
I love what this country has to offer. I love learning from this country, “for America has too much to teach the world…” as W.E.B. Du Bois so eloquently explains when discussing the double consciousness that African Americans feel in The Souls of Black Folk (go read up on it). He also speaks for many of us African Americans who “will not bleach [our] Negro soul[s] in a flood of white Americanism, for [we] know that Negro blood has a message for the world.” That bleaching is indeed very real. That’s why you say the pledge of allegiance two thousand one hundred sixty times in grade school. You’re also bleached through the media, July 4th celebrations, military appreciation days, etc. Why do you think so many people automatically see a person in uniform or a veteran and stop them and say “Thank you for your service” without knowing anything about the person? It’s because they’re trained to think that uniform equates to noble service. They see that uniform, military ID, or hat and give them a pass, not knowing anything about the person. They could have been dishonorably discharged. They could have went overseas and killed kids for the fun of it. They could just simply be free-loading off the military’s benefits without even contributing. I mean hey, “14,900 members [of the military] were sexually assaulted in 2016…more than once, resulting in over 70,000 assaults in 2016 alone.”
But thank you to the service of all 14,900 of those assaulters.
With that being said, just how surprised can we be when people that blindly follow that logic (uniform = service) see black skin and equate that to ghetto, violence, or whatever other American-imposed stereotypes are given to this country’s darker skinned folks?

(I know that may have shaken your little American world…
…so go take a little break and get some water and come right back. I’ll be here.)
Anways, where was I? Ah yes, the millions of ways they’ve bleached us (or attempted to): through the touching commercials, American paraphanelia, ideas of the American Dream, America’s this, America’s that. You get the point. In America’s defense, every country does it though. Why do you think North Korean citizens have a negative outlook on Americans and call us “the devil”? They’re conditioned to think so. Bleached. Brainwashed. On the other hand, why do we think they’re crazy for following that crazy government? Because we’re brainwashed and bleached and conditioned to think so. Raise your hand if you even know anybody from North Korea. Alot of us know nothing about North Korea. Heck, it could be a great place that we might like better!
(ok that was a reach. Go America!)
Moral of the story: Check yourself or those who are using this situation to show how “American” they are. I think its time we start questioning this country’s values while we Ameri-can. I think this may be the one of the conversations that Colin Kaepernick wanted to get started. Although the season has started, lets not allow the conversation to die down just because we’re so distracted by the Eagles beating the Skins 30–17, or the Patriots losing already, or how well your fantasy team did or didn’t do.
[Click here to read more of the conversation: Kaeptain Amerikkka (continued)]
