The degree of parochialism and racial essentialism exhibited in this article is beyond repulsive. It’s like, “black, black, black, black, black,” as though nothing but the superficial appearance of people grouped under the contrived sociological category we term “black” matters to you.
Needless to say, many of the items in your of demands are loony. “Retract the 13th Amendment”? I thought that was the one abolishing slavery, but I had to look it up to confirm my memory just to make sure I wasn’t missing something. So, I assume you have some sort of rationale for suggesting that we go back to making slavery legal under federal law, but maybe that rationale is something that would be worth explaining to readers … because otherwise lots of people are going to be pretty confused … as in, exactly whom do you want to enslave?
Other demands on your list are just so inadequately thought through that they’re inadvertently funny. Some of these include the ones that fall under the general category that you’ve described as “[l]et’s demand complete control of dollars and services allocated on our behalf.” What does that mean? Who is “our”? All “black” people? To whom is money going to go? To any individuals who can prove they’re “black,” or who look sufficiently “black” to the casual observer? To some as-yet-unformed governing body that’s going to rule over the as-yet-unformed “United States of ‘Black’ America,” which will hold the purse strings and disburse funds only to “black” people? And how do you separate “dollars and services allocated on [your] behalf” from dollars and services allocated to other groups? It’s not like federal or state disbursements are generally earmarked for “black” people or “white” people. So what are you even talking about here? Do you have any idea?
Whether or not you realize it (and you may well realize it fully), what you’re writing really amounts to a “black” separatist call to create an independent “black” fiefdom. If that’s what you want, go ahead and say it. I’m sure there are many “white” supremacists out there who’d be perfectly happy about that and say, “Yep, let ’em no-good n-ggers form their own damned country so they don’t create more problems for ours!” In other words, you’re feeding right into the hands of the haters at the fringes of the political spectrum. Anyone (like me) who still believes in a pluralistic nation, however, is going to have to reject your demands.
And I won’t even comment on the absurdity of using a boycott of football to achieve your proposed demands. As I’ve written in response to others calling for an NFL boycott in response to Kaepernick’s actions, there already IS an effective boycott going on, but that boycott is by those of us (far outnumbering you hate-filled resentniks) who believe that a well-compensated football player, just like any other employee, regardless of race or occupation, shouldn’t have the right to use the platform offered to him by his employer to embarrass that employer and make disrespectful political statements that alienate the employer’s customers: see https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2016/10/05/confirmed-nfl-losing-millions-of-tv-viewers-because-of-national-anthem-protests/#7c1e40e1226c. If he wants to make political statements on his own time, that’s his business, of course, but when he’s working, the NFL and its viewers have every right to expect and demand that he do his job and nothing but his job, which consists of tossing a football, not engaging in puerile protests or mental gymnastics a lot more complex than reading defenses.
