Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave


For what it's worth, Scott Key celebrates runaway slaves being killed fighting for safe haven in the song too. I find it ironic that people will sport Confederate flag stickers on their trucks, or defend people who do, but these guys kneeling for a song that celebrates the plight of their lineage are freedom-hating traitors. If you're one of the people who fail to understand that irony, please schedule a vasectomy now.

Lest we forget, law enforcement in this country has become so highly militarized and rights-averse that the FBI conducted illegal searches in people's homes at the threat of imprisonment just a few years back. MRAPs were supplied to local police stations. Connecticut mandated gun confiscation. The umbrella of government wants to take YOUR guns, YOUR money, and YOUR civil liberties.

It's misguided and oversimplified to think that the same New York cops who killed a black man for selling cigarettes are in cahoots with the California system that let a white male off with 6 months for felony sexual assault. However, if you think that Colin Kaepernick or Brandon Marshall or Jeremy Lane don't appreciate their financial and athletic gifts because they're protesting a homage to a government that will crush us all alike at the first opportunity, you've really got some missing hardware in between your ears.

My father fled South Africa during apartheid, landed in what was then Zaire, only to be threatened by civil war. When he arrived in America, he worked his ass off to develop a life of prosperity. I won't soon forget that, and I would never want to leave this country. America affords me more opportunity, freedom, and pride than any other nation on earth. And I will never hesitate to give my life defending it from its enemies, foreign or domestic. That being said, I also don't turn a blind eye to the grave missteps we have taken here, and I will not be a jingoist who refuses to look at things critically for fear of being 'unpatriotic' or 'unappreciative'.

I will finish by saying this: as young black men, our biggest threat in this country is ourselves. The social engineering and manipulation on the parts of Southern Democrats all those years ago was only a catalyst; not an excuse. It is our responsibility to stop killing each other in senseless crimes in our own communities. I acknowledge this fully. But it is ignorant at best, and facetiously racist at worst, to ignore and marginalize the reality this is still a nation whose lifeblood was built on slavery, native genocide, and corporate immunity. The Jim Crow era is over, but not forgotten. To tell a Black man that he needs to "get over it" or "he himself wasn't a slave" is so disrespectful to his family's history and his social growth, that it's no wonder the racial tension has gotten to the point it's at now. Imagine telling people looking at the Alamo museum or Auschwitz that they weren't alive then, so they should shut up and quit bitching.