Dear Drew Brees…
Dear Drew,
In your concern regarding the social activism surrounding police brutality is primarily focused on respect for the flag, I have a couple of questions for you.
First, if you could dress all black people in the US flag, and they received criminal treatment like George Floyd did, or Trayvon Martin did, would you come to their defense and assure that they could pass freely without being hunted to death? If we painted their cars with the symbol of Old Glory, would you make sure Sandra Bland was not abused?
If your answer is no, and that you think my questions are ridiculous, then you may be beginning to get the picture. Human life is more important than any symbol that you can come up with.
And, if your answer is yes, that you would provide this protection for black people from the killing fields that are the streets and private homes and apartments that we face day in and day out, year in and year out. If you say, yes, Breyonna, if you had sheets made of the US flag, you would not have been shot in your bed, then my question to you is…
…why are you making black people dress up in, sleep in, and drive symbols of the US flag, just to say alive? What is wrong with white people to make THAT necessary?
Sincerely,
Bitey
06/04/2020 @ 10:38 am
“What is wrong with white people to make THAT necessary?”
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Apparently, Mr. Brees is in President Johnson’s category of “the lowest white man”.
To some, like Mr. Brees, there’s nothing wrong white people having more respect for the flag than they have for the life of any black person…
As I have previously stated: In the minds of still far too many white people, black people have yet to move up from the status of chattel property to the status of human being…
06/04/2020 @ 11:17 am
White people in untold numbers have been “aggressively hiding” in their bunkers far too long.
Feeling a sense of oppression for their thoughts, some have emerged now, draped in flags and typing madly on Twitter that they have had enough. They cringe in power behind nameless, badge-less police hoping their falsetto squeals will be heard as historic clarion calls to their own.
06/04/2020 @ 12:18 pm
My wife had a great observation. Hers was a “what if”, but I would like to actually do it. I’d love to send Drew Brees a flag that represents his children. (I think you can smell what Bitey is cookin’). I’d send him the flag and tell him to protect that flag before he protects his actual children.
I’ve seen photos of his children. They’re white. It would make an interesting test.
06/04/2020 @ 2:19 pm
I’m surprised.
My wife taught at Purdue for ten years, so I lived in Lafayette, IN from 1996-2006. Soon after we got there, the football coach with a badly losing record quit to take an assistant coaching job at Norte Dame and was replaced by a coach from Wyoming. The new coach did well his first year with the players he inherited, then he got to recruit his own. At quarterback, he recruited a high school kid out of Texas. That was Drew Brees, and he played at Purdue for four years while we lived there.
Brees was always big on community service. He donated a lot of his time. From a personal standpoint, he had a stellar reputation, and I”m talking about off the field. He appeared to have a similar reputation with his teammates. (The town and the university’s student body were very White. The team, of course, was not.) In a fairly isolated community in Indiana where Big Ten sports took up a disproportionate amount of news and he was an unusually successful player (imagine a Purdue quarterback who could come from behind to beat Ohio State), he was extremely visible for four years. If he ever displayed racism, it would have been really, really difficult to hide. Even if it didn’t get to media, it would have gotten around campus in the form of rumors, and my wife was a professor there, in a position where for a couple of reasons those rumors would have been likely to reach her.
Maybe he hid it well. I haven’t followed the Saints closely but from what I could see Brees has had the same kind of reputation in New Orleans up until this..
This would be an easier call if he had a history. I’ve seen his statement since and he doesn’t waffle at all; he apologizes straight out and says unambiguously which side he’s on. He also indicated which side he was on the day before the interview took place where he made his comments.
We may be looking at a Texas kid who was taught to revere the flag as a kid, still does, had two grandfathers who fought in WWII, and didn’t stop and think about what stating his opposition to disrespecting the flag would mean under current circumstances. He’s said the same thing about the flag before, but the line that draws in the sand is way more stark now. A stupid and extremely insensitive move, for which he absolutely deserves the backlash he got.
https://sports.yahoo.com/drew-brees-anthem-comments-and-the-ensuing-backlash-offer-a-preview-for-nfl-season-023821870.html
Or he might have meant what he was interpreted to mean.
He’s clearly guilty of something. Could be abominable privilege. Could be worse.
But I definitely didn’t see this one coming.
06/04/2020 @ 3:02 pm
Drew Brees is a good person by any measure…but this one. I’ve been aware of Brees for decades, and I have approved of the way that he does most things. But, what do I know? I have only ever seen him on television. I have never actually had a face to face conversation with him.
Unfortunately for him, he posted these ridiculous comments online, and they were televised. First of all, his grandfathers fought for the country. Several hundred million other’s grandfathers fought for the country. None of that means, therefore, elevate a symbol, or a metaphor above flesh and blood. The notion is complete nonsense. Furthermore, there were millions who had grandparents who may have been prevented from fighting for any flag. Were their values any less valid? And why does your grandfather’s actions earn for you the status of being able to judge another person’s view of their own oppression? I mean, how come Drew Brees’s grandfather’s service gives their grandson the status of declaring that a protest against murder is ACTUALLY disrespect to the flag? Not only is it a complete subject change, but what does your grandfather have to do with this insensitive non sequitur?
I don’t think Brees’s statement is really about his grandfathers. I think it is a status that he wants for himself. Look at me, I do a symbolic thing toward a symbolic thing. That makes me a good person. I am so good that I can tell you that the symbolic thing that you do is wrong, and disrespect to my symbolic thing. Brees is out of his rabbit assed mind.