NOTE 9/12/16: This was previously posted August 29, 2016 but was inexplicably removed for some reason.  Probably some error of mine, but I didn’t do anything differently than I normally do.  Oh well, here it is again, just not quite as timely…

A collection of thoughts about 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick…

So I posted this meme on Facebook under this status: “He will inspire others as others inspired him. It’s not really about what Colin did, it’s about what you are gonna do. In a very real sense, we are all his wide receivers…”

…and a Facebook friend mused that he could support Kaepernick in this case if only he hadn’t made it about race.  I mused back that:

That’s a fair point. And I agree–the real issue isn’t race, it’s state violence. Not that race isn’t also an issue, which is a source of confusion for a lot of people, because the victims of much of the most outrageous state violence are black. Having said that, the outrageous state violence upon minorities creates a desensitizing effect that will carry over when the same level of indiscriminate state violence gets turned on the white population. It will already be established that, if an unarmed person is killed by the police, that unarmed person should have “obeyed orders” and not been “breaking the law.” The unarmed victim will always be seen as having “brought it upon himself.”

And when one really thinks about what Kaepernick actually did, one might conclude, as I did, that:

It’s actually quite eye-opening that the simple act of remaining seated while a song plays can generate so much controversy in 2016. The best thing those who oppose him for it could have done would have been to completely ignore it, which would have deprived his very small gesture of any of its power. The eye-opening part is of course that in an age in which we can carry all the accumulated knowledge of human history in our pockets, purses, bras or what have you, it still strikes a lot of people as super-important to conform to an outmoded, gratuitous exercise in groupthink.

An FB friend posted this misguided meme…

Which I reposted with the following:

No! The anti-Kaepernickians completely miss the point–he never said HE HIMSELF was oppressed. By sitting during the anthem, he stood NOT for himself, but for others. He stood up by sitting down. He is obviously quite aware of how good he personally has it, which puts him in the position of being able to call attention to the plight of those who aren’t as privileged as he is, which makes his simple act all the more admirable.

And finally, there was the Facebook friend who posted this single sentence: “There’s no such thing as an oppressed American.”

Wow. Lots of agreement with that statement by this person’s friends.  I asked what this person meant by the use of the word “oppression.”  His answer:  “By ‘oppressed,’ I mean when someone isn’t afforded the rights and opportunities that every other citizen enjoys…that no American is being held back, or treated unfairly.”  Eh, close, I guess.  Not exactly the Webster definition of “unjust or cruel exercise of authority or power.”  How anyone can state no Americans are oppressed under that definition is beyond me…

UPDATE:  In the days between the original posting of this article and this re-post, I created the following meme: