If you see a lot of us people from the middle class walking with our heads held a little higher, now you know why. It seems that the NFL has finally acknowledged our presence. Or to be more accurate, the lack there of. A lot of us stopped watching the NFL last year, due to the “protests” of some players by taking a knee during the singing of the National Anthem. These protests were based on a false narrative, according to Eric Reid, a safety with the San Francisco 49ers, and a team mate of Colin Kaepernick. Reid wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times on September 25, 2017 stating “.. I began paying attention to reports about the incredible number of unarmed black people being killed by the police.” The problem with this statement is that it’s just not true. In 2017 (or even in 2016) there was not an incredible number of “unarmed black people” being killed by the police.
Evidence showed that Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, was not a passive individual, who was attacked by the police, but rather the aggressor, trying to take the gun of police officer Darren Wilson, after Wilson spotted Brown after Brown robbed a nearby convenience store. The St. Louis county grand jury refused to indict officer Darren Wilson.
If Football players were protesting the problem of black-on-black homicide, they might have had more support. Or maybe football players could have been protesting the number of black children being raised by single moms, after the dads deserted them. Black attorney turned talk show host Larry Elder calls it the number one problem in the black community.
Heather McDonald, in a speech given at Hillsdale College, noted:
“ Every year, approximately 6,000 blacks are murdered. This is a number greater than white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, even though blacks are only 13 percent of the national population. Blacks are killed at six times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined. In Los Angeles, blacks between the ages of 20 and 24 die at a rate 20 to 30 times the national mean. Who is killing them? Not the police, and not white civilians, but other blacks. The astronomical black death-by-homicide rate is a function of the black crime rate. Black males between the ages of 14 and 17 commit homicide at ten times the rate of white and Hispanic male teens combined. Blacks of all ages commit homicide at eight times the rate of whites and Hispanics combined, and at eleven times the rate of whites alone.”
So knowing this, and more, many of us looked at the NFL players/protesters as a bunch of bandwagon protesters who were looking for an excuse to look like they were “down with the struggle” without putting themselves out too much. But don’t get us wrong. They have a right to protest, no matter how weak their argument was. But they forgot about us, and our wallets.
I, and millions of people who think just like me, can’t do much about a lot of stuff. But we can change the channel. After all, that’s what liberals have been telling us for decades. Every time we, as conservatives, see something on TV that we think is abhorrent, or hear something on radio or the interweb that we think is terrible, liberals tell us “Just change the channel if you don’t like it.” So we did.
And the NFL lost millions of dollars. Hang on. Let me wipe the tears from my eyes. There. The NFL didn’t think that it was a big deal that a huge amount of it’s customers were offended by players protesting a minor event (the number of black people killed by police), but ignoring a major event(s) (the number of black people murdered by other black people). And it’s all valid because we were offended. That’s all that matters anymore. We were offended.
The NFL has prided itself on hard tackles, huge players colliding with other huge players on the field, and a general sense of mayhem. It seems that middle America has begun to play the same game. Some would call it a cheap shot for working class folks to blind-side the NFL and it’s players. So sorry. We had to send Roger Goodell and his crew a message that we knew they would understand. There’s only one place that the NFL is sensitive, so that’s where we hit them. Right in the wallet.