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On September 3, 2018, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Just Do It, Colin Kaepernick tweeted out a Nike ad that will (and should) go down as one of the brands very best.

It was also one of its most divisive, because it directly addressed some of Americas biggest fault lines: race, patriotism, sports, and business.

For Nike founder Phil Knight, that was the point. It doesnt matter how many people hate your brand as long as enough people love it, Knight toldFast Company. And as long as you have that attitude, you cant be afraid of offending people. You cant try and go down the middle of the road. You have to take a stand on something, which is ultimately I think why the Kaepernick ad worked.

For anyone who watched episode five of the excellent ESPN documentary The Last Dance, this strategy is a marked departure from the one employed by Michael Jordan, arguably the man most responsible for Nikes global dominance, for his entire career.

In this latest installment of the 10-part docuseries, Jordan discussed his famed apolitical approachas well as the infamous lineRepublicans buy sneakers, too.

Jordan finally cops to the line, which was reported to be falsely attributed to him, but said it was a joke. I dont think that statement needs to be corrected, because I said it in jest on the bus with Horace Grant and Scottie Pippen, said Jordan. It was, yknow, thrown off the cuff.

What wasnt off the cuff was his decision not to endorse 1990 North Carolina senate candidate Harvey Gantt, who was running against incumbent (and notorious racist) Senator Jesse Helms, to become the first African-American representative from Jordans home state.

As Jordan describes it, he simply chose to support Gantt from behind the scenes. My mother asked to do a PSA for Harvey Gantt, he said. And I said, Look mom, Im not speaking out of pocket about someone I dont know. But I will send a contribution to support him. Which is what I did.

Gantt lost.

President Obama, who appears in the doc, says at the time that Jordans lack of support for Ganttand the line about Republicanswere disappointing. For somebody who was at that time, preparing for a career in civil rights law and in public life, and knowing what Jesse Helms stood for, you wouldve wanted to see Michael push harder on that, said Obama. On the other hand, he was still trying to figure out How am I managing this image that has been created around me? And how do I live up to it?'

Social and political activism by athletes wasnt a new concept in 1990. Muhammad Ali became a cultural icon not just for his boxing prowess but for the having the courage of his convictions. Jordan knows that, but just didnt see himself in the same light. I do commend Muhammad Ali for standing up for what he believed in, said Jordan. But I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player. I wasnt a politician. I was focused on my craft. Was that selfish? Probably. But that was my energy. That was where my energy was.

As much as it worked 30 years ago, how popular would it be now? That Kaepernick ad starred an NFL quarterback who hadnt played a game in eons. Meanwhile, LeBron James, arguably this eras MJ, has repeatedly spoken out against social injustices, from Black Lives Matter to clowning on President Trump. The tagline for his media company Uninterrupted is More Than, meaning more than an athlete, that alsosurprise, surprisehas a Nike collaboration. James also produced a three-part Showtime seriesbased on Fox News host Laura Ingrahams dismissive shut up and dribble comment telling James and other athletes to stick to sports.

Other star athletes, if not leading the charge, back those athletes who do with retweets and other signs of support.

Theres a parallel between both Nike and Jordan, who managed to spin enough PR magic in the 90s to get most people to forget their actions (or lack thereof) in the real world, whether thats around labor practices or social justice.

Today, its a balancing act thats tough, if not impossible, to pull off.

Witness Nikes issues around sexual harassment and work culture, or the mess involving running coach Alberto Salazar, that have forced the company to take action.

You could make the argument that it was a different time, a different league, a different culture in Jordans heyday. In this same episode, we learn about the role that the 1992 Olympic Games played in making Jordan a cultural icon and not just a star athlete. For his entire career, Jordan managed to cash in on all the endorsements that made and maintained that statusNike, Gatorade, McDonaldswhile not using it for any other positive purpose. Its an opportunity few top athletes would waste today, because both the fans and the brands would demand it.

Whats perhaps most interesting is that even though his biggest corporate partner is saying its got to take a stand, and his closest present-day parallel in James continues to balance social responsibility and the spokesman role, Jordan himself hasnt changed at all with the times.

Its never going to be enough for everybody, I know that, I realize that, said Jordan. You know, because everybody has a preconceived idea of what they think I should do and what I shouldnt do. The way I go about my life is I set examples. And if it inspires you, great, I will continue to do that. If it doesnt, then maybe Im not the person you should be following.

In 2020, off the court, there just arent too many top sports stars with a strategy to Be like Mike.

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Michael Jordan's apolitical brand building wouldn't work in 2020 - Fast Company

Anti-lockdownprotests continue across America, a movement made up of dissatisfied citizens who believe stay-at-home orders violate their constitutional rights (happily waiving their right to not die ofCovid-19) and backed by a cohort of right-wing groups.

While the protests themselves have pushed the issue of alockdownexit strategy ever higher on the agenda of state leaders, theres another vital aspect to them that onlookers keep pointing out: the white privilege at play.

The gatherings to protestlockdownsacross the nation have been overwhelmingly white. No need to mask the truth: this has affected the way they are being policed.

Despiteanti-lockdowndemonstratorsgridlocking cities, carrying firearms to what is supposed to be a peaceful assembly andfundamentally breaking lockdown rulesby notpracticingsocial distancing, they are being more or less being left alone by the authorities present.

This is in stark contrast to the treatment of black and ethnic minority protesters, especially those who amassed to challenge police brutality as part of the Black Lives Matter movement.

A 2018 protest against the police shooting of unarmed black man Stephen Clark in Sacramento sawpolice arrest 84 people, despite it being a peaceful march.

In comparison,four people were arrestedat ananti-lockdownprotest in North Carolina on 29 Aprilthat saw hundreds gather in violation of state orders, heckle of police officers, including demonstrators taunting police to arrest them, and the damage of state property.

It is not whether police should be detaining protestors that has become a cause of debate; its that there is a glaring difference that marks the occasions when they decide to do that. Its as stark as black and white.

Consider the reception given to armed protesters who stormed the Michigan Capitol Building on Thursday.

Hundreds gathered in Lansing to demonstrate while legislators were debating extending state of emergency measures, according to NBC News. Many were armed; some pushed inside the building, then attempted to gain access to the House floor, but were blocked by state police and sergeants-at-arms.

At this point, footage was captured demonstrating the huge racial disparity between the treatment of white and black individuals who exercise their constitutional right to protest.

Video shows armed protesters crowded into the building's lobby, screaming at police and chanting.

This is the peoples house, you cannot lock us out, they shouted.

Outside, a sign read Tyrants get the rope,reportedThe Guardian.

Inside, photos reveal high tension; in one shot a bearded man screams directly into the face of state police officers, who stand silently in front of him.

Yet no arrests were made at the protest and a spokesperson for the state police told NBC that it is legal to carry a firearm in Michigan if done with lawful intent and the weapon is visible.

Black individuals have been targeted by police for all of these thingsin the last 12 months alone, including an incident last August where a black man was stopped and questioned for over 20 minutes because awhite woman reportedhe was looking at her suspiciously.

The thought of what the police would do if a crowd of majority black individuals with firearms stormed the states most significant political buildingand screamed into their faces is harrowing. And its a far cry from what actually transpired. Its this, the difference in the manner these two communities are policed simply due to skin colour, that lays bare how deep white privilege goes, right into the bone marrow of every institution.

As Congresswoman AlexandriaOcasio-Cortezput it, those who protested on issues that disproportionately affect ethnic minority individuals, like police brutality anddraconianimmigration policy, were treated as a threat to society.

Yet armed crowds violating federal and state guidelines to protest against measures implemented to save lives during a pandemic are supported by the president and go unchallenged by law enforcement.

Whats the difference? Theyre white.

As it stands, these protesters eventually dispersed, doubtless feeling they have made a great stand for what they believe are their constitutional rights. It is unlikely that they spared a single thought to the conditions of privilege that allowed them to do so without being penalised.

Equally, the officers present almost certainly didnt stop to ponder how they may have reacted if the baying crowd holding rifles inches from their faces and demanding entry to the House had not been predominantly white. So we must do it for them.

There is no vaccine being developed for white privilege and, as these protests show, it's only getting more virulent. In turn, we become more vigilant.

White is not always right.

Originally posted here:
Aggressive, armed protesters stormed a state building last night and the police did nothing imagine if black people had done the same - indy100

April Love Geary is ashamed to be from Huntington Beach because of all the "white privilege" punks, as she put it, protesting SoCal beach closures.

Robin Thicke's fiancee went off Friday on the protesters, calling them out for their utter disregard of people's health during this coronavirus pandemic. She said "it's the most white privilege bulls**t" thing she's seen.

Check out the video ... April says it's ridiculous that Black Lives Matter protesters across the country have been met by cops in riot gear, while Huntington Beach protesters -- with much less melanin -- are allowed to exercise their right to free speech. All while cops stand idly by without riot gear.

She urges protesters to keep their asses at home, and adds, "It's not that hard."

The demonstrations started after California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the closure of all Orange County beaches, starting this weekend. Some protesters carried signs that read, "Masks don't work. My body, my choice."

As we reported ... heavily-armed protesters stormed Michigan's statehouse after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer extended the state's emergency stay-at-home order until the end of May.

No one's armed in the OC, but April's still super pissed.

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Robin Thicke's Fiancee Goes Off on Huntington Beach Protestors - TMZ

In 2019, Rutland High School faced quite a bit of scrutiny for flying a Black Lives Matter flag. The Black Lives Matter movement and flag flying were started as a sign of solidarity for those who suffer racial injustices. Many schools in Vermont had raised the flag, the first being Montpelier, in 2018. When Rutland High School wanted to show its support, leaders were met with a lot of backlash.

Facebook was flooded with posts regarding the situation with some calling the people behind the flag snowflakes, other people were questioning when the school is going to fly an all lives matter or white lives matter flag, calling Rutland a terrible place to live.

The comments did not stop there.

In a mandatory three-day diversity training for staff members at city schools planned by the Peace and Justice Center, a handful of staff members wore MAGA hats in protest and made derogatory remarks to two black Peace and Justice staff members, an article in VTDigger reported.

At a training to learn to not be racist.

But before the issue of the Black Lives Matter flag, there was Adam Taylor.

Taylor was a newly hired superintendent at the city schools when he made controversial remarks at a Castleton University event that offered an open dialogue about race in our community.

Taylor offered an Oakland analogy, by comparing a pimp and a young lady to a student and teachers relationship.

The backlash he received was widespread, with the Rutland community immediately calling for his resignation.

But when Michael Blow, a member of the School Board, said the n-word at a School Board meeting, nobody said a peep.

It wasnt until Tabitha Moore, president of the Rutland chapter of the NAACP, took initiative and finally called him out.

Taylor is black. Blow is white.

Most recently, students of color at Rutland Middle School complained about a history lesson in the classroom.

In a buy-and-trade simulation to help students understand the mercantile system during the American Revolution, a slip of paper that represented slaves had the word negroes.

The teachers defended themselves saying they had been teaching this lesson for years. Moore says they werent as sensitive as they needed to be.

Living in Vermont, with its mostly white population, and going to school in Vermont, with its mostly white population, its hard for people to diversify themselves and learn about issues people of color face when they have no first-hand understanding themselves.

But still, this is three instances of racism in our city schools way more than there should be. And quite frankly, its embarrassing.

How is the ever-growing population of people of color supposed to feel comfortable in their own schools when their peers and their teachers refuse to allow themselves to listen to what the students are trying to say, and their implicit bias continues to show.

The question is what are the schools going to do about it?

When the NAACP filed an official complaint to the middle school, Moore offered the idea of an implicit bias training which has yet to happen.

At the School Board meeting that addressed the history lesson, it was suggested that perhaps a diversity council should be created which has yet to happen.

And since the current pandemic caused students and faculty to be out of school, is this another issue that is going to be swept under the rug until the next one?

Things wont change unless the schools make it change and hiring white native Vermonters to be administrators in the schools, despite the request for more diverse representation, is not going to help.

Students have spent far too long feeling uncomfortable in their own schools. We have reached a point in our society where now, finally, its not going to be tolerated.

Aris Sherwood is a journalism student at Castleton University. She grew up in Rutland.

See the rest here:
Sherwood: Racism is alive and well | Perspective - Rutland Herald

In the mid-1960s, California occupied a singular place in the American popular consciousness as a perpetually sun-drenched, wave-lashed paradise populated by tanned white people. TV shows such as 77 Sunset Strip competed with teen movies such as Beach Party and Bikini Beach to buoy up the myth, while a succession of classic Beach Boys hits hymned Californias endless summer.

This airbrushed image helped distract from the reality of an openly racist society. Glendale, for instance, was, as Mike Davis and Jon Wiener put it: Los Angeles Countys most notorious sundown town: no blacks were allowed to live there, apart from a few servants, and any person of colour on the streets after 7pm was automatically arrested. Across the state, black people dared not set foot on all but a few beaches for fear of arrest or violence from white gangs. At the time, Californias non-white population was more than a million people; they were all, as Davis and Wiener put it, edited out of utopia.

The image of a California dreamscape, nevertheless, survived intact until August 1965, when the so-called Watts riots left whole blocks burning across the black ghetto of the same name, before spreading through black communities from Venice Beach to San Diego. The violence left 34 people dead, many of them innocent bystanders shot by police, and more than 1,000 injured. On one night alone, as Davis and Wiener attest, 10 unarmed black civilians were shot dead, including one man who, sheltering inside his house, had been hit by 11 shotgun blasts by 15 cops.

Watts was a rebellion rather than a race riot, with police brutality, endemic racism and urban poverty as its main causes. The social conditions that prevailed in black areas of California were all but overlooked in the mainstream media, though, with the Los Angeles Times describing it in distinctly colonial terms as a guerrilla war and comparing it to the Mau Mau eruption in British East Africa. For all that, as the authors point out, the burning and looting that left Watts in ruins was seen as a victory of sorts by many black people in the neighbourhood and beyond. It precipitated a street-level cultural renaissance there with the formation of community arts projects including the Watts Writers Workshop and the Underground Musicians Association, which was led by the visionary free jazz pianist Horace Tapscott.

This complex dynamic political and cultural activism emerging as a direct response to racist politics and brutally oppressive policing is a recurring trope in the often tumultuous events recounted in Set the Night on Fire. It is a book that at times makes Los Angeles seem like an outpost of Americas deep south. Though race is inevitably the faultline on which most of that tumult erupts, it is the chasm between the citys carefully cultivated image and its dark, violent heart that is most striking throughout.

Anyone familiar with Mike Daviss magisterial social history of Los Angeles, City of Quartz, will know what to expect in terms of the epic sweep and questioning tone of Set the Night on Fire. This time, the focus is firmly on race and rebellion, but he and Wiener also map out the myriad protest movements, countercultural voices and campaigns that made 1960s Los Angeles an altogether more edgy and volatile city than the states hippy capital, San Francisco.

There are several chapters devoted to the various strands of black nationalist politics that sprang up post-Watts

Beginning with the formation of the LA branch of the Congress of Racial Equality in 1961, the authors take us on a turbulent journey that ranges from the Ban the Bomb marches of early in the decade to the late-60s Stop the War protests against the conflict in Vietnam. Along the way, they trace the gestation of the womens movement and gay rights in the city, as well as exploring the importance of alternative media such as the Los Angeles Free Press, an underground newspaper that reached a quarter of a million readers in the late 1960s, providing a counterpoint to the conservatism of the citys mainstream newspapers.

There are several chapters devoted to the various, often competing, strands of black nationalist politics that sprang up post-Watts, producing a new breed of young radicals such as Stokely Carmichael and Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers. Less well known, but no less fascinating, are the chapters on Mexican-American protests, including the Chicano Blowouts (1966-68), a mass walkout by pupils in protest at segregation in California schools. There is a fascinating account of the reign of terror conducted by the Gusanos, an anti-Castro Cuban terrorist group that declared war on anyone and anything in Los Angeles that they deemed friendly to Havana. Begun in 1968, their three-year bombing campaign remains the longest wave of terrorism in the citys history.

Around the same time, white middle-class teenagers were finding themselves for the first time on the receiving end of police violence as they congregated in their hundreds along Sunset Strip. Their presence signalled the coming of the Summer of Love in 1967, mobilising the LAPD, a force seemingly primed to respond with violence to the slightest manifestation of nonconformity. This characteristic reaction inflamed, rather than cowed, the teenagers, whom Davis and Wiener describe as a cross section of white teenage southern California. A subsequent protest march drew several thousand kids to the Strip, many of whom defied a police curfew that banned juveniles from the streets after 10pm. Many carried placards that read Stop Blue Fascism, prefiguring the Dead Kennedys gleefully provocative punk song California ber Alles by a decade.

Reading this book, the message on those placards does not seem like an overstatement. The kind of police violence, often contested, but seldom punished, that is catalogued in these pages echoes across the years, most loudly in the acquittal of four police officers captured on video brutally beating a young black man, Rodney King, in 1992. It echoes, too, in the riven political landscape of Trumps America, where a nationwide protest movement insists, in the face of repeated incidents of lethal police violence, that Black Lives Matter. Los Angeless recent past, as it is recounted in Set the Night on Fire, makes Americas present seem somehow less surprising, but no less depressing.

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Set the Night on Fire by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener review - The Guardian