Posted on 09/22/2016 8:41:48 AM PDT by MichCapCon
The president of the NAACP Greater Grand Rapids Branch said that students who brought a Donald Trump for president banner and a Betsy Ross 13-star flag to a local high school football game were involved in intentional actions of intimidation and rooted in no agenda other than to insult, to injure, and to incite.
Cle J. Jackson, the president of the NAACP Greater Grand Rapids Branch, said the Betsy Ross 13-star flag has been appropriated by the so-called Patriot Movement and other militia groups who are responding to Americas increasing diversity with opposition and racial supremacy.
At a Sept. 9 football game at Houseman Field between Forest Hills Center and Ottawa Hills, some students brought the Trump banner as well as the 13-star Betsy Ross flag. According to data collected by the state, in 2015-16, Forest Hills School Districts student population was 81 percent white while in Grand Rapids schools just 23 percent of the students are white.
Jackson made the statement Wednesday after a request from Michigan Capitol Confidential for comment.
From Pennsylvania to Missouri, and other states and parts of Michigan, the Field of Play activities that should be the home of sportsmanship have become home to racial taunts such as blackface, displays of nooses and now supposedly covert actions, Jackson said in his statement. Celebrating flags co-opted by exclusionary movements, held next to political banners of a presidential candidate who has offended people of color and immigrants, and accompanied by chants of Go home by some students at a majority White school to players at a predominantly African-American school are not coincidences by unaware students. They are intentional actions of intimidation and rooted in no agenda other than to insult, to injure, and to incite.
Jackson continued: In the current sociopolitical environment, we are not surprised by such activities. At the same time, in keeping with our mission, we are not silent in the face of intimidation whether at the ballot box or the ballgame. We applaud our community, especially our young people -- of all races -- who did not react in any way expected. As we've always done, we stood our ground, and played our own game.
Jackson compared the reactions to the event to responses to San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who has refused to stand during the playing of the national anthem during NFL games saying he refuses to show pride in a country that oppresses black people and people of color
As a civil rights and advocacy organization, we also speak out against double-standards. Therefore, we clearly request that those in our community who dismiss this local incident while denigrating a football player who takes a knee during the National Anthem to raise awareness of racial inequity, will recognize the bias preventing them from seeing hostility against young people of color, Jackson said. Left unchecked, those actions at the game may fuel tomorrows hiring, health care and law enforcement attitudes and decisions of the next generation coming from schools such as Forest Hills Central.
It’s called backlash. Expect it when people get fed up.
They came and took my Confederate flag and no one said anything. They came for my American flag and there was nothing that could be said by anyone.
Betsy Ross sewed her flag as a protest against a white man...a “cruel master”...the king of England...
Surely the blackthuglivesmatter crowd is happy about that ???
I think Mr. Jackson suffers from Oversensitivity Privilege.
He also needs a good American History class.
FUJackson.
Hey, baby, there ain't no easy way out.
The more I read this, the worse it gets.
The “controversy” has been ginned up by Ms. Urena-Ravelo, the founder of a local Black Lives Matter group and homosexual who wants to make straight white boys cry.
More about Urena-Ravelo here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3469591/posts
How America has changed.
At one time:
Person A: “I don’t like what you’re doing there. It offends me.”
Person B: “Then look away. Or go somewhere else. This is a free country.”
Now:
Person A: “I don’t like what you’re doing there. It offends me. And the government will support my outrage.”
Person B: “Oh, sorry. I’ll stop doing that immediately.”
Trump is perhaps America’s last hope to correct this.
Exactly right
There was one year during which there were 19 states (between the admission of Indiana and the admission of Mississippi) but I don't know if they changed the flag during that period.
There was one year during which there were 19 states (between the admission of Indiana and the admission of Mississippi) but I don't know if they changed the flag during that period.
Stop committing crime, stop popping out babies and abandoning them. Get a job and responsibly. They you won’t blame Whites and an old flag for your self-inflicted pathologies.
Eventually America as we knew it will become Bosniamerica. Everything is beginning to point that way. There was a time when America had it made, it was the mid 20th century. It only took a few administrations and a world of left wing propaganda to destroy it all.
F__k off, NAACP! You and Black Fecal Matter.
It appears they don’t like any old flag. Soon everything will be “Reicist”!
I may have to adopt the Eureka Flag of the Australians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Flag
Since everything is offensive to “them” we might as well fly ALL of them.
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