Last night, you may have noticed your social media feeds filling up with Dale Hansen. The longtime sportscaster added his own eloquent, straightforward take to the national anthem protests, defending the rights of the athletes to kneel to protest police violence against black Americans. It’s Dale at his clear-eyed best, using equal parts emotion and logic to kindly dismantle the arguments of those who rail against the players’ right to protest systemic racism.
There’s this:
Donald Trump has said he supports a peaceful protest because it’s an American’s right—but not this protest, and there’s the problem: The opinion that any protest you don’t agree with is a protest that should be stopped.
Martin Luther King should have marched across a different bridge. Young, black Americans should have gone to a different college and found a different lunch counter. And college kids in the 60’s had no right to protest an immoral war.
And there’s this:
My best friend in high school was killed in Vietnam. Carroll Meir will be 18 years old forever. And he did not die so that you can decide who is a patriot and who loves America more.
And this one, if you haven’t gotten it yet:
They, and all of us, should protest how black Americans are treated in this country. And if you don’t think white privilege is a fact, you don’t understand America.