While Colin Kaepernick is still under fire for taking action against injustice in this country and sitting during America’s racist national anthem, Ryan Lochte is being cheered on while he dances on “Dancing with the Stars.”
Colin is now being joined by other football players. Tennessee football players stood for the anthem but instead of placing their hand over their chest, they put their fist in the air, a popular symbol of black power.
With more players refusing to respect the anthem, shit is getting real. Players are losing endorsements and people who have been following this story closely are not happy.
While these players are being scrutinized for standing up for those who don't have a voice in America, Ryan Lochte is competing as a contestant on Dancing with the Stars. This is most likely a ploy for good publicity after the stunt he pulled in Rio during the Olympics. If you're not familiar with what happened in Rio, Lochte and two other teammates vandalized a gas station and fabricated a story about how they were robbed at gunpoint.
On Monday night's showing of Dancing with the Stars, men rushed the stage trying to get to Lochte. The were wearing shirts that had Lochte's name with a line through it. While this stunt left Lochte looking even further victimized, many people, including myself, have no changing opinion about him for that matter.
At a time where he was representing America in another country, what Ryan Lochte did was simply unpatriotic in every sense. Calling Colin Kaepernick unpatriotic? Makes no sense.
Though Kaepernick isn't supporting the national anthem, what he's doing shows that he actually loves his country. This may come as a shock to most, but what he's doing shows that he cares about America. He cares about Americans of all races and wants to see change so that everyone can be treated equally. If everyone received the same privilege and benefit of doubt as Ryan Lochte received and is still receiving, America would truly be the best country on Earth.
With Kaepernick's platform, he has brought attention to the real history behind our country's national anthem. The Star Spangled Banner is a poem and many people, like me, hadn't heard about the third stanza of the poem until Kaepernick's high profile protest. The third stanza is basically a celebration of the deaths, no the murders, of black slaves.
The third stanza goes something like:
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a Country should leave us no more?
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
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
With that being said, you can't possibly be upset or offended that a person of color, or any logical person for that matter, refuses to stand up and sing along to a song that continues to oppress them centuries later. If the national anthem is a representation of our country, then it should be changed to something more becoming of what America claims to be: the land of the free.
