Colin Kaepernick’s protest of kneeling during the playing of the National Anthem appears to be spreading. When I see such protests, I am both offended and proud. Offended at the disrespect shown to those who worked tirelessly for two centuries to build our democracy and those who fought and died to preserve and defend it. Proud, because each protest is in itself a celebration of American freedom. The tragedy is that those protesters don’t realize that those same acts in many other countries would cost them their lives.
In a broader sense, our black countrymen need to realize that they have been sold out by a new generation of black leaders and the Democrat Party. Martin Luther King’s dream was not about government handouts and a generation on welfare. His dream was for equal opportunity for all, for the chance to learn and grow and share in the America Dream of providing a better life for our children.
Al Sharpton and today’s Democrats ask only that you hate “whitey,” fear the police and vote Democrat, promising more food stamps, and unending welfare benefits. while relegating our black city neighbors to drug-infested housing, crime-filled streets, poor schools and little hope for a better life. When Republicans offer a way out through school vouchers, Democrats and their allies in the teacher’s union go on the attack.
Somehow, in the last 50 to 60 years, being a Republican has been equated with being a racist. Nothing is further from the truth. It was Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, who freed the slaves, It was Dwight David Eisenhower, a Republican, who integrated Little Rock, and, it was a Republican Congress that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Voting Rights Act of 1966.
The United States has now had a black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a black National Security Advisor, a black Secretary of State, a black Attorney General, several black congressmen and senators, black Supreme Court Justices and a black president.
As the poet Robert Frost observed, we have “miles to go before we sleep,” but can’t we at least acknowledge the progress we have made in this continuing experiment in individual liberty and personal responsibility we call America?
(Leigh Bosse lives in Hillsborough.)