Perhaps off-topic, I find it hilarious how everyone here just immediately categorizes each other as either left or right-wing based on their opinions on this matter. And I think it's stupid that people automatically lump someone as a Trump supporter when they give a moderate to conservative opinion.
As for my views on the matter, I do believe that players do have the right to express their opinion, but I'm not sure if kneeling before the flag is a positive way to go about it.
And as for the police brutality thing, yes, police brutality does exist, and yes, we need to hold those involved accountable. However, I also believe that it is blown out of proportion at times, and I certainly don't believe it exists on as large of scale as the media wants you to believe. After all, that's what big media likes to do, is blow things out of proportion to get people all riled up and following a side like sheep. I also think it's ridiculous that people are suddenly developing this view that all police are scumbags. Honestly, if you want to get into the whole matter of crime against X group of people, then look at the statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice, which I'll leave linked below, and look at how much crime has actually decreased in recent years as a whole, especially with black-on-white and white-on-black crime. People want to talk about this whole systemic racism thing like white people everywhere are trying to put black people down. When really, we are still in a transitional period. When you think about the southern segregation laws and what they brought, well, a good chunk of the black population at that time still lived in the south. And hell, there's still a good chunk of the black population in Mississippi, Louisiana and especially Georgia. With segregation laws, a lot of black people didn't have a whole lot of access to education, and it wasn't until MLK and President Kennedy that people started addressing those issues. Now you think about the generational gap between then and now, with 20-25 years being a generation, it's not big at all. In fact, 50 years is pretty recent. Considering how few black people had a good education back then, and looking at the difference in wealth and social status during that time, do you really think that kind of change is going to happen overnight? Of course not. And how likely are one's children to pursue an education when the parents aren't well-educated? It's probably not as likely as one with educated parents, and only recently do you actually have more people in the black community going into college. Hell, look at the number of black men attending college vs black men in prison from 2003 to 2009 (link below). The number in prison during that time remained mostly stagnant, whereas there was a pretty good increase of black men enrolling in college.
Is this to say that the system isn't entirely racist? No. There are probably some areas, especially in southern states, where things ought to change. But considering where we're at right now, I don't think that systemic racism exists on the scale that leftists think it does, and black people clearly aren't being held back on such a grand scale these days. If there is one good thing that does come from the left, it's that many of them are trying to encourage more people in the black community to get a good education. But I think the continuous push of this victim mentality isn't going to help people rise up. Instead, it only encourages them to expect something from society. And for those that are legitimately victims, they need to be encouraged to rise out of their position. Victim cards are never good for anyone.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...te-on-white-crime_us_59e8a84fe4b0d0e4fe6d953b
https://www.amren.com/news/2013/03/more-black-men-in-college-than-in-prison/
