Just in time for
Independence Day 2019, sports apparel giant Nike released the Air Max 1 USA
shoe, featuring a miniature “Betsy Ross” flag on each heel. This, of course, is
the flag with the earliest American colonies represented by thirteen white
stars in a circle which, legend has it, Mrs. Ross presented to George
Washington himself. But when Nike pitchman Colin Kaepernick,
former NFL national anthem protester, got wind of the plan, he complained to Nike
that the flag recalls a time when blacks were enslaved. Also, according to a
person who reportedly was privy to the conversation, Kaepernick informed Nike
that the flag has recently been appropriated by American white supremacists.
Instead of
telling Kaepernick, “So what?” and going forward with the patriotic product, Nike
sparked controversy by recalling the shoe from retailers and issuing a
statement in which it claimed the decision was “based on concerns that it could
unintentionally offend and detract from the nation’s patriotic holiday” – a pathetic
excuse. If anything detracted
from the Independence Day holiday, it was the controversy that erupted over Nike’s
choice to offend the patriotic majority of Americans by sending the message
that the Betsy Ross flag is a shameful symbol of racial oppression.
On MSNBC, race-huckstering
Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson chimed in on Nike’s
decision, of which he predictably approved. He claimed that the Betsy
Ross flag
hails from the revolutionary period of this
nation’s founding which was deeply embroiled in, you know, in enslavement...
But also, it’s the recent use of this flag that has been the most opprobrious.
Right-wing white supremacists have used it as a rallying cry for their own
cause... Right now this flag has been used by people who want to pummel African-Americans,
Latinos, Jews and other people, neo-Nazis that want to claim that they have the
true copyright on American identity. So why not choose a flag that is
representative of everybody? The diversity of identities, ideologies, people of
color and mainstream people who exist in this country? That’s the kind of
blowback against the use of this particular flag.
The notion that
white supremacist groups have appropriated the Betsy Ross flag is ludicrous. They
aren’t in a position to appropriate anything unless the American people allow
it. There is no more marginalized, politically impotent extremist element in
America today than actual white supremacists, who have been hyped by the
leftist media complex as a rising Hitlerian tide empowered by President Trump’s
purported bigotry. (Meanwhile the media downplays or even covers for actual
threats such as the violent Antifa network, human traffickers at our collapsing
southern border, and Islamic terrorists). Mark Pitcavage, a senior research
fellow for the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said that the ADL
does not even include the flag in its database of hate symbols. “It’s not a
thing in the white supremacist movement,” Pitcavage asserted.
Lisa Moulder, director of the Betsy Ross House in Philadelphia, said she has
never heard of the flag being used as a hate symbol. Even if random bigots
have tried to adopt the Betsy Ross flag, we only empower and legitimize
them when we declare that we don’t have the cultural power to stop them from
making the flag their own.
Indeed, words and
symbols do matter, and that is why propagandists like Dyson and Kaepernick work
so relentlessly to delegitimize this nation’s flag and everything it stands for
by linking it inextricably to the evil of slavery.
As for symbols of
hate, let’s examine some of the symbols of hate Colin Kaepernick has proudly endorsed.
He is fond of wearing t-shirts expressive of his political beliefs and role
models. Here he is at a press
conference in a t-shirt promoting the Black Panthers. The Panthers were
a criminal organization modeled on Communist revolutionary movements, bent on waging
literal warfare against law enforcement and overthrowing America’s purported
white power structure. Here he is in a t-shirt
emblazoned
with Panther founder Huey Newton’s visage over the
red star of communism (a symbol of hate if there ever was one). Newton was a cop-killing,
murdering, raping, pimping, drug-dealing thug who cared less about helping his
people than about establishing himself as a feared street legend. Here is Kaepernick in a shirt
featuring photos of the 1961 Harlem meeting between mass-murdering Communist
dictator Fidel Castro and anti-Semitic
black supremacist Malcolm X. The caption
reads “Like Minds Think Alike.” Here is Kaepernick in socks he wore
on the football field depicting cops as pigs, a symbol of hate “appropriated”
by the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement, whose members chanted “Pigs in a blanket,
fry ‘em like bacon” as they marched behind police officers in St. Paul, Minnesota
in 2015 amid a spate of murders of cops nationwide.
“Believe in
something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” goes the Nike slogan in a
successful ad campaign starring Colin Kaepernick. But what has Kaepernick
sacrificed? Nothing. And yet on this 4th of July, Kaepernick doubled
down on his ingratitude for the country that has given him wealth and fame, by
tweeting a quote (out of context, as
Breitbart notes) from ex-slave Frederick Douglass: “What have I, or those I
represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours,
not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking
and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.” Colin
Kaepernick, a multi-millionaire raised by white adoptive parents, a man who
idolizes Communist dictators and violent criminals, who fuels a venomous
distrust of law enforcement, has absolutely zero moral authority to lecture
Americans about racial oppression.
Kaepernick can
wear whatever t-shirt or sock or shoe he likes; unlike the repressive Left, conservatives
aren’t calling for “offensive” articles of clothing such as the ubiquitous Che
Guevara t-shirt to be banished from the marketplace. What is most concerning about
the Nike controversy is that it demonstrates Kaepernick has the cultural clout
to call up one of the world’s most successful corporate entities, tell them that
the identity politics grievance committee disapproves of one of their products,
and Nike will jump to comply. He possesses this cultural power because the left
has spent decades successfully indoctrinating younger generations with the demonizing
narrative that their country is history’s Great Oppressor. For many of these young
people – Nike’s customers – Kaepernick is a civil rights icon of moral
authority.
Politicians
recognize this too. As National Review’s Charles C.W. Cooke pointed
out, Democrat presidential hopefuls weighed in and were quick to
virtue-signal their sympathy for anyone who might potentially have been
traumatized by the sight of a Revolutionary-era American flag on a shoe. Robert
Francis “I speak Spanish!” O’Rourke, for example, announced, “I think it’s
really important to take into account the impression that kind of symbol would
have for many of our fellow Americans.” Yes, I suppose “fellow Americans” who
hate this country would find a patriotic symbol triggering. Julian “I
don’t speak Spanish as bueno as Beto but I’m working on it” Castro also
issued a pandering approval of Nike’s capitulation: “There are a lot of things
in our history that are still very painful,” he said. ‘We need to move toward an inclusive America
that understands that pain.”
No, we don’t.
America is already the most inclusive nation in world history, and nothing is
ever accomplished on either a personal or societal level by simply wallowing in
the pain of the past, particularly a past no one alive has personally
experienced. What we need to move toward is an America that appreciates this
country’s epic contribution to ending slavery at home and abroad; an America that
realizes the only way to close our racial divide is to jettison the historical
ballast altogether and move forward as equals in a proud, patriotic citizenry; and
an America that ignores the demands of self-righteous grievance-mongers who
have a vested interest in clinging cynically to victimhood, exploiting white
guilt, and perpetuating racial conflict.
From FrontPage Mag, 7/8/19
