Where sports cuts through all this bullshit isn't in a bunch of fatasses watching a bunch of athletes, it's in a bunch of regular folks really playing the sport together. Who of any race can really relate to the greatest athletes in the world - and also multi-millionaires - mostly from a distance or through a box? Go down to the local park and see a bunch of guys playing a pickup game. Go to your local high school and see a bunch of kids working hard, smart, and together. Go to a local gym and see a bunch of guys (yes, I know, and gals) punching/grappling/throwing each other and being careful and respectful of one another at the same time. You'll see people of all races, backgrounds, religions, whatever. Give people a chance and they will keep the stupid, divisive bullshit the numbskulls drone on about here to the side. Sport is a great way of letting that happen where circumstance might otherwise not often provide.
This thread is about the success, the unremarked upon success, of Spectator Sports to "cut through all this bullshit".
And though it does not make sense, plenty of regular folks, really DO "relate" and/or as I put it, identify with these multi-millionaires, and feel part of their victories and defeats.
My position that this is powerful evidence AGAINST the claims of many on the Left that America, specifically White America, is a racist and oppressive place.
I do think there is an emotional connection with the team and admiration for the players and I think the fans could care less what race the players are. In that respect I agree that professional sports not only helped break down cultural barriers re race, but once those barriers came down, it has been among the least racist components in American culture. At least until this silly Anthem protest started.
Somebody mentioned Jackie Robinson. He entered professional sports 70 years ago well before civil rights became a national issue and before there were any formal efforts at desegregation in the armed forces here and abroad, in America, in Europe, in colonial Africa, largely everywhere. During the mid 20th Century there was segregation pretty much everywhere in the industrialized world.
Abraham Lincoln did issue an emancipation proclamation to free the slaves in the Confederacy--not in the Union slave states--and held a personal theory that the black people should be deported to Liberia or British colonies elsewhere. Typical of the culture of his time, he was a segregationist opposing the mixing of the races and interracial marriage between black and white was unthinkable.
Even Charles Darwin who proposed that all of humankind descended from a common ancestor also taught that natural selection produced a superior race among Anglo-Saxons and an inferior race in African black people. And now 99.9% of school curriculum includes his theory of evolution but ignores his theory of racial superiority.
Up to the mid 20th Century, segregation was widely the cultural norm throughout the free world. To think that the USA was somehow the only 'villain' of 20th Century culture is just silly.
And I do credit sports, including professional sports, as an important factor in changing that culture and begin breaking down the cultural/emotional barriers. It is worth noting that had not a large majority of white people wanted those barriers down, it would never have happened.
So now black professional football players, with their less black teammates supporting them in solidarity, are protesting police brutality by disrespecting the National Anthem and the flag that has made it possible for them to live a lifestyle that the huge majority of us can only imagine?
What kind of sense does that make? Do a demonstration by wearing a certain color ribbon or picketing a police station if they feel strongly about it.
But don't disrespect us all and think they are winning converts to their cause by disrespecting our flag and National Anthem. And don't give us the really ignorant statement that they aren't disrespecting their country or those of us who love it. They hurt their cause by disrespecting millions in a way that only makes them look like arrogant hateful jerks. And telling us that isn't their intent makes about as much sense as any other rude and boorish people telling us it was not their intent to be rude or boorish to us but only to those other people.