The dustup the past week between President Donald Trump and American pro athletes–especially NFL players and NBA players LeBron James and Stephen Curry–hits home for me since I was a PGA Tour pro golfer full-time for thirty years. Yeah, we never had many blacks on the Tour. But then Tiger Woods came along. Yet we used to have mostly black caddies. I stand with these athletes on this issue. They are right and Trump is wrong. As I said in my last post, he’s a white supremacist JERK. He has no empathy for minorities, such as blacks in this country.
As I’ve said before, I was born and raised in the cosmopolitan city of Seattle. And I lived in the South, in Houston, Texas, for forty years. Plus, I played tournament golf for over forty years all throughout the South. I know from experience about the white-black racial problem in this country. In Houston, and all throughout the South, I lived there when blacks had to ride the bus in the back, when there were public restrooms for blacks and public restrooms for whites. I’ve seen white guys drive cars at blacks walking the street and try to kill them with their cars. Most black people in the South were scared of whites.
When I started the PGA Tour, in 1964, black player Charlie Sifford was not allowed to compete in tournaments in the South right before that. Finally, the PGA Tour told those sponsors that if Sifford and any other blacks were not allowed to play, the PGA Tour would not come to their city. All of those sponsors caved, and let Charlie play. Nevertheless, it took more years before they let Charlie Sifford into the clubhouse to have a locker as all the other players did. I played in tournaments in the South and was paired with Charlie Sifford when fans would pop beer cans on his backswing and yell obscenities at him, only because he was black. It was so disgraceful, so disgusting. The sponsors should have sent a disguised bouncer in Sifford’s gallery and ousted such individuals.
This weekend during the playing of the national anthem prior to NFL games, teams locked arms, etc., as a demonstration of solidarity regarding the issue at hand. What is it? The players are objecting to some incidents of unnecessary police brutality and injustice directed toward minorities, especially blacks, with some resulting in killings.
Seventy-five percent of NFL players are black. They are not doing it to disrespect “Flag or Country,” as President Trump alleged last Friday in Alabama in a speech. He said, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired. HE’S FIRED!'” Talk about disrespect; that’s a disrespect of not only the athletes but U.S. presidency.
That is so ridiculous! Donald Trump says stuff all the time as president that is a failure to recognize our democracy. Those athletes have a constitutional right to kneel, lock arms, whatever, during the playing of the national anthem. People even have a right to burn the American flag, as the courts have determined. As I’ve said before, Donald Trump does not believe in our democracy. If he was head of a country in an era gone by, he would be a dictator throwing political dissidents in prison and perhaps killing them as comedian Bill Maher alleges.
As I have said repeatedly on my blog for nearly two years, Donald Trump is not presidential. He is not qualified to be president of the greatest nation on earth, which is supposed to be “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” He never has been, and he still isn’t. And calling people SOBs is so disrespectful. As far as I’m concerned, that right there eliminates him from being president. We don’t know what special counsel Robert Mueller has got for evidence against Trump, but it could cause Congress to tell Trump, “You’re fired.”
Here are the words of our Pledge of Allegiance to our flag, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
The athletes have been demonstrating about this commitment of every American to being a nation that is indivisible and provides liberty and justice for all, thus regardless of skin color. The athletes, in their locking arms together during the singing of our national anthem, are protesting and thus calling attention to the need for our nation to do what this pledge says–provide liberty and justice for all.
I think Donald Trump is showing from his actions that he is a white supremacist, just not to the degree that some people. For him to say yesterday that his remarks last Friday at Alabama were “not about race” is a falsehood. It sure was about race. And the players were demonstrating about race, not about disrespecting our flag. Trump is showing his lack of empathy for minorities. I absolutely detest racism!
Any professing Christians who are racist should be ashamed of themselves and repent in public in sackcloth and ashes!
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In