Last NFL season Colin Kaepernick decided to protest racial injustice by taking a knee during the national anthem before his games. This local movement quickly sparked discussion within conservative media who quickly pounced on the story, “ignoring Kaepernick’s stated intentions and instead accused him of being unpatriotic and disrespectful of the American flag” (citation). However, this wasn’t what brought Kaepernick to news headlines. The controversy exploded when President Donald Trump responded to the situation by saying, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners ... say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He’s fired!’ (citation). Overall the NFL protests demonstrate how the snowballing turmoil of a country can make
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With the help of Michelle Alexander and her findings regarding mass incarceration as the new form of the caste system—a system that has survived the test of time and continues to affect many black men in the United States but is now more imperceptible to the American public—the paper will first unravel and present the racial politics of America. Following Alexander’s findings, search studies presented by the National Football League and professors at Georgetown, George Washington, Emory, and Iowa State University, will reveal that there is inequality found in the NFL and that the league isn’t simply football but about maintaining a patriarchy. A big part of the history of US sports is this idea that sports in America are preserved for white men. That this is how sports were founded; this is how they were …show more content…
Although the United States holds five percent of the world’s population, it is responsible for a fourth of the world’s prisoners. More than half of these prisoners are of color. (Alexander 2012, 189) The statistics contradict the U.S.’s long-held ideal of freedom and equality. Trump was elected to quite men like Kaepernick and calm the anxieties white people had about the state and direction the country was heading. To understand the level of the circumstance, it is important to dive into the racial history of the United States. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander states even though slave owners, Ku Kux Klan members, and unjust police men, didn’t exist in the same period, each group of men is responsible for many of the lives lost due to the fear of intimacy created by the different racial caste systems. History has repeated itself, but also brought something new to consider in each moment. She makes a point and expresses that different racial caste systems appear to fade, but then new systems take their place with the needs and limitations of their generation. As the names of the racial caste systems change, so do the names of the victims and their murders. Alexander argues that mass incarceration is the new form of the caste system—a system that has survived the test of time and continues to affect many black men in the United
With the help of Michelle Alexander and her findings regarding mass incarceration as the new form of the caste system—a system that has survived the test of time and continues to affect many black men in the United States but is now more imperceptible to the American public—the paper will first unravel and present the racial politics of America. Following Alexander’s findings, search studies presented by the National Football League and professors at Georgetown, George Washington, Emory, and Iowa State University, will reveal that there is inequality found in the NFL and that the league isn’t simply football but about maintaining a patriarchy. A big part of the history of US sports is this idea that sports in America are preserved for white men. That this is how sports were founded; this is how they were …show more content…
Although the United States holds five percent of the world’s population, it is responsible for a fourth of the world’s prisoners. More than half of these prisoners are of color. (Alexander 2012, 189) The statistics contradict the U.S.’s long-held ideal of freedom and equality. Trump was elected to quite men like Kaepernick and calm the anxieties white people had about the state and direction the country was heading. To understand the level of the circumstance, it is important to dive into the racial history of the United States. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander states even though slave owners, Ku Kux Klan members, and unjust police men, didn’t exist in the same period, each group of men is responsible for many of the lives lost due to the fear of intimacy created by the different racial caste systems. History has repeated itself, but also brought something new to consider in each moment. She makes a point and expresses that different racial caste systems appear to fade, but then new systems take their place with the needs and limitations of their generation. As the names of the racial caste systems change, so do the names of the victims and their murders. Alexander argues that mass incarceration is the new form of the caste system—a system that has survived the test of time and continues to affect many black men in the United