Taking a Stand by Taking a Knee

Colin Kaepernick

The quarterback who was just recently benched for having one of the worst games that an NFL quarterback can possibly have. 5 sacks and fewer than 5 passing yards in a game.

The guy who has been supposedly reported as a supporter of Fidel Castro. 

The multimillionaire athlete who takes a knee during the national anthem, one of America's most sacred rituals. 

As most of white America says, Kaepernick is an unpatriotic, privileged, attention-seeking washed up quarterback. 

But why does he take a knee during the national anthem? In Colin Kaepernick's eyes, he is giving a voice to the people of America who don't have one. In this case he is speaking about the ongoing of police brutality towards people of color. An issue that has quickly gained steam as one of America's most talked about topics over the past couple of years. 

HOW DOES TAKING A KNEE MAKE A DIFFERENCE?

How does taking a knee or refusing to stand during the national anthem make any sort of impact on society other than stirring up a ruckus that isn't appreciated by most people? 

Well, that's where it starts. Kaepernick is getting the attention that he wants by getting America talking about it. This causes the conversation to start about police brutality and racial inequality which in turn gets folks voicing their opinions and then starts a divide. 

This divide consists of Kapernick's supporters who are glad that he addressed such a pressing relevant  issue and also Kaepernick's critics who are attacking who he is, a black man who happened to take a knee during the national anthem, rather than what he is taking a knee for. 

HURTING THE NFL - GAINING STEAM

Turning a blind eye to the things of the real world is what America does best with the amount of television programming, the social media trends, and also the lack of compassion for things that aren't pleasant topics to bring up. America is a nation that is one of the sports capitols of the world. 

The NFL has taken a huge hit from this protest. What started as a protest by one person then turned into a unifying action taken up by other professional athletes such as Megan Rapinoe, a gay woman, college athletes and high schools in Kentucky, Illinois, Virginia, Minnesota, and Maryland. 

Daniel Roberts of Yahoo Finance writes that during a poll of 841 adults by phone who were asked to answer what their cause for watching less NFL games are, 56% said the anthem protests were a factor. Colin Kaepernick did in fact accomplish what he set out to do, which was unveil the unwillingness of this country to address this topic. 

Kaepernick himself said, "It's something that can unify this team. It's something that can unify this country. If we have these real conversations that are uncomfortable for a lot of people. If we have these conversations, there's a better understanding of where both sides are coming from."

Well played Colin

WHAT ARE WE SAYING ABOUT OUR PATRIOTISM? 

Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted to fight other
people of color. 

 Muhammad Ali. Tommie Smith. John Carlos. 

All three of  these men of the 20th century had their own ways of protesting the treatment of people of color in the United States. But as time has gone on, one question remains.

Why are we still in the same hole that we were in nearly 50 years ago? The hole where a person of color has to make a public protest to raise and encourage discussion on a topic that should have been resolved by now? 

To say that Colin Kaepernick did something un-American by making a societal issue, in this case racial inequality, a spectacle for discussion and correction is un-American in itself.

Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised black gloved fists in the 1968 Olympics to protest
unfair  treatment of African Americans back in the US.

IT'S WORKING 

According to Robert Klemko,it's working with more than 70 NFL players in a group chat talking about what Kaepernick started. 

If you have the San Fran 49ers pledging to donate $1 million, I'm sure that you can say  that this was a pretty effective movement on Kapernick's end.

AMERICA'S FEAR 

Eddie Glaude - Chair of the Center for African American Studies at Princeton and  author of Democracy in Black says that White America is nothing short of scared of the dangerous and disloyal person of color. He claims that this is true in Thomas Jefferson's notes on The State of Virginia. He was concerned about the retribution for the sin of slavery. 

Tommi Lahren herself said "those in black communities [to] take a step back and take some responsi-damn-bility for the problems in black communities.” 
Even in the midst of Kaepernick gaining support from US veterans with the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick, Lahren still finds a way to say that he is still doing wrong although he has the support from these Veterans himself. If you watch these videos here, you will see that she continually looks for a way to bash Kaepernick by saying how much the country has "done for him". 
David Hookstead completely ignored the reasoning behind Kapernick's protests by saying,"His birth parents abandoned him,a white family raised him, he received a full scholarship to play football and the NFL made him a multi-millionaire." It doesn't stop there. He goes on to say, "He was literally abandoned by his black birth father and was rescued by a white couple. If he has a right to be angry at anybody, it’s his black father."
It seems here that Hookstead's remark's are fueled by blatant racism. Although he tries to defend his point, he completely disregards that Kaepernick is protesting the oppression against minorities and instead words it in ways to say that Kaepernic should have more respect for the white people of America who have so graciously blessed him.

PATRIOTIC? 

If we are so patriotic as a country then how come there wasn't any backlash for NFL teams waiting in the locker room during the National Anthem? Teams weren't standing for the anthem until 2009. And as far as I remember, nobody said even a sentence about this. 

Also, if protesting for the National Anthem is wrong, then I assume it's okay for Kansas City Chiefs fans to finish this sacred anthem with "home of the CHIEFS!"

Wouldn't true American Patriots politely allow their President to address 9/11 in a tribute that obviously means so much to the families of the fallen?

RIGHT OUR WRONGS? 

U.S. Sen. Carl Schurz of Missouri

Scherz said, "My country right or wrong; if right,to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." 

This goes to say that if something is unjust in our country then we have every possible liberty to make things better for the greater good. America is supposed to home of the free. 

When will we start seeing that? 

Ali, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Colin Kaepernick.

These names are of men who have made a stand for the minority groups in America.

What is the right way to make your voice heard? What is the wrong way? Because at this point it seems that we are doing it all wrong. And as the platform of social media gets bigger, exposure of these things increases. Pretty soon, we won't be able to hide the elephant in the room. 

"My country right or wrong; if right,to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right."

Parodies

Let's be honest with each other here. We are all a little crazy about our fan fiction fantasies or something that we wouldn't dare show to  the rest of the world.

I for example am an avid Harry Potter fan. I'v been a fan since as far back as I can remember. I've seen all of the films and read the series at least 5 times. BUT like any logical fan would do, I'm involved with the idea of my favorite trio's lives after Hogwarts, so I resort to YouTube and watch fan made videos of Harry and his life 10 years later in videos such as this little gem right here !!

I was actually a huge fan of this because it showed actual conflict in the character's identities and lives that are relevant to all us fans that basically got old and are looking for some way to hang onto our childhood bond with this movie franchise that took us away from our boring world and into Hogwarts World of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Being a fan I encourage this type of work and video production. But when the thought of copyright is brought into this, it becomes a really messy grey area of who should profit from  this and get credit.

In cases like this, I say that we fans should be allowed ti run free and hold onto things like this and continue finding ways to live in this fantasy world without looking too crazy or weird in the process.

Trump, Tweets, and Sharing - November 2

Never did I think that social media platforms would have such a big play in something as important as the Presidential election.

Why We Share

In today's day and age, we can't help but take to social media with anything that catches our attention that we might think is

• funny 
• informative
• relevant to a topic that is on the news
• or maybe we just want to show off something  that we think is worth flaunting and bragging about - like mothers who post at least 3 times a week about their children. 

And let's be honest here, we all know that ONE person who shares or posts way too much.

Whether it be Snapchat 

                                                        

Or just shares way too much info with annoying #hashtags and odd topics of interest

How Social Media has Enabled Trump to Make a Surprising Run 

The way in how Trump has used his social media platforms has been quite remarkable in how he has drawn insane amounts of support for "speaking his mind" and that isn't always a good thing 

In cases like this, it scares the heck out of people how this nimrod can potentially lead this nation. He capitalizes on the idea of saying outrageous things that invoke responses from racist White America and being what most of his supporters would label "transparent" because of his lack of a filter. So this gives him some sort of an edge. While his PR team manages to run damage control, he seems to gaining steam as he goes on with posts that are aggressive and just not very well thought out. 

And when  you throw in a post such as this one-

I can only hope that we all pray for a better day.

Sharing 

In a way, Trump has used social media to his advantage while also maintaining his image because of how he is playing to the wants of his not very well informed followers, which let's be honest, is pretty much most of us today! As much as I'd hate to admit it, he's using his social media presence to his advantage and targeting in on what his followers want to hear rather than justifying his "plans" with facts and explanations of process or clear plans of execution.  

Crowd Sourcing Blog Response - October 2

When I think of where we stand as a society at the present moment, I like to think that we are a generation of overly absorbed individuals in how we are constantly interacting with different parts of the world in the palm of our hand. This is known as a cell phone. Duh.
By owning this mainstream device, it's insane to think that we have friends that we consider friends but aren't really our friends. Kinda makes sense, right?
  
Well, anyways, by being in a network of people that are constantly connected with you, you are more likely to expand your knowledge of a subject you are interested in or even solve a crime.
In Katie's post she brought up how crowd sourcing has been used to identify murder victims, find missing folks, and solve a few crimes in the process.
Crowd sourcing has become a way that we can com together for a common cause and achieve a goal but that isn't how things may always work out. Being that crowd sourcing has been used to the benefit of folks it is seen as a great tool. Buuuuut the thing is that not everyone who participates is what you'd call "certified" to help. Like any other tool or social networking scheme, it works just as well as you want it to. And that all comes back to you looking into the validity of your sources while also enjoying this thing we call the Internet.

Wikipedia

If you think about it, we really access the internet more times than we might care to count. And in the case of college kids and adults alike it's mainly to access quick information that we might need to resolve a conflict that we might be having with a friend or maybe to type up a last minute essay like Danny had said. And really why do we rely on the internet so much? Why do we rely on Wikipedia so much? How do we know that we should even trust these sites?
We trust them when we need a general idea of how something works, a quick explanation, or instant information on odd things  that we may not be confident enough asking in class or in a casual conversation. We trust Wikipedia because it never has been totally wrong. The thing here is that the site is run by so many different folks who care very deeply about the subjects that they are publishing and releasing to the public that they wouldn't dare allow any false information taint that admiration they have for it. In addition to that aren't you also gifting  to yourself when you release this info and have it read by millions of people in seconds?
My point here is that although Wikipedia is a resource designed for quick information, it is still more than reliable enough thanks to egos to allow us to use this information at will and use it efficiently.

Works Cited

http://damndanny.blogspot.com/

Gifting Post

My last post on Instagram has received 96 likes. Basically this is a post of my brother and I after we played a game against Southwestern University which we won. And I happened to get as many likes as I did because of how I emphasized the relationship I have with my brother along with the fact that we are also college teammates. So in theory, I hustled likes from my followers by playing to their heartstrings.

 This makes me feel accomplished and has filled me with a sense of importance that we all crave when we carefully select a caption that we think will tug at our follower's heartstrings or when we selectively choose a filter that we feel will best compliment our features, smiles, or our best angles. This is a gift in itself to me. It is also a gift to whomever I tag in the post with me. Once this person I have tagged in this photo starts getting attention from my followers who are requesting to follow him he will feel obligated to start posting with me to somewhat return the favor in hopes of maintaining this relationship that results in exchange of attention and followers. This is in theory how we validate our existence or appearance in mainstream media ; by the number of people who acknowledge our existence.


Gifting is a form of bartering that we use to have our presences felt and without a doubt this feeds our egos that so powerfully control our decisions as to why we do things or determine how much effort we put into things like relationships with people that have a platform that can ascend us into another level of the spotlight in our mainstream social media communities.