Come Together

Posted by James, 13 Nov

They say that every storm cloud has its silver lining, and the open, in-your-face racism we’ve seen since the inauguration of Donald Trump has felt like a Category 4. Tragedies like what happened in Charlottesville have no upside, of course, but the general climate of racial discord we’ve seen since Donald Trump took office has made it obvious that no, actually, we are not “past” racism. This is not a post-racial society, after all. And that realization is a good thing. Because if we all need to solve a problem, we all need to agree that there IS a problem.

When Barack Obama was President, it was really easy for white people to say, “Hey, racism is over. We’ve got a black man in the Oval Office. He was elected TWICE. So I don’t want to hear about it.”

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But the reality was, even then, racism never went anywhere. It was still here. It just got a lot bolder once Trump was elected. That may have come as a surprise to some people — may be a LOT of people — but it’s good that they know now. Pretending it was gone actually does less to make it go away forever than dealing with it head-on, as we are today. The folks who didn’t want to talk about this for the last eight years have gotten a wake-up call. They’ve realized we do need to talk about this. Turns out everything is not all right.

The issue of the NFL and the national anthem is actually one small part of it, but Trump got more players to take a stand by kneeling than Obama did — unintentionally, of course. He called out the NFL, and the players answered. They aren’t the type to be intimidated, and they let him know that. We all know there are two sides to the anthem issue, and both are right in their own way. But that dust-up has got a lot of people, including me, saying the hate has gone too far. At the end of the day, we are all on the same side here. Whatever your race, wherever you stand on the actions of many police officers or paying tribute to our flag no matter what, you’re an American first and foremost. We love our country and we want what’s best for all of our citizens because we’re in this together. It’s time to remind each other of that.

Former Green Beret Nate Boyer is the one who advised Colin Kaepernick to kneel during the national anthem rather than stand or sit down if he wanted to protest the actions of an American institution like the police. Kaepernick took his advice. The kneeling was intended as a respectful compromise and protest, not a slap in the face of our nation’s Armed Forces.

Boyer recently wrote an open letter to all of us saying, basically, calm down! He said it’s time to stop competing all the time. Stop trying to be right and stop needing to make someone wrong. If you want to fix this — and we all do — you need to remember that we’re on the same team. It’s time to put aside the politics. It’s time to love one another and get things done because if we can just do that, we can accomplish anything. That’s how we got to the moon, beat the Russians and built computers the size of a playing card.

Love across lines… That’s what interracial dating is all about, right? One of the many amazing things about interracial love is that it brings together the family and friends, the people who don’t have enough good conversations with people of other races — not on the reg. Oftentimes if two people respectfully disagree, a good conversation makes both people better understand the other’s point of view. Realizing that your son/daughter/sibling is with someone really cool of another ethnicity is a great way to bridge these gaps. Suddenly “them” is also “us,” and things get more complicated — in a good way.

People like Boyer are looking at the situation as it is now and saying, “this is crazy.” There have always been racial tensions, but who is going to win in a fight like this? There are no winners. And that’s obvious, all of a sudden. White people are seeing that we weren’t overreacting — there is plenty of real nastiness out there — and black people just want them to stop ignoring what’s going on and agree that we gotta do something, together.

What we need right now, as a nation, is to be united. As Nate Boyer says, you have to really love America to risk your life for it. To be fully behind our Armed Forces, to pay proper tribute to their sacrifice, we can’t be divided and bickering, as much enemies to one another as our soldiers are to the country’s adversaries. They defend ALL of us and our rights as citizens. Everyone can agree that honoring them is the right thing to do. But just because America is great doesn’t mean that it’s perfect. Let’s stop fighting amongst ourselves and work together to address the problems with our country. If we can start doing that, then everyone will happily stand with pride for the national anthem.

That’s the great thing about where we are, as we close out 2017. I’m seeing folks on both sides stunned by how ridiculous this is getting, and how far things are straying from our values. The time is now to reach out, remember that we have more in common than we don’t, and make lemonade out of lemons. Let’s come together, y’all.

Thanks, Trump! You’ve opened some eyes, and strangely enough, that’s exactly what we needed.

27 responses to "Come Together"

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  1.   JIMBO12 says:
    Posted: 03 Mar 18

    People, mostly young blacks have this on going strong Hate & Lies for OUR "PRISIDENT DONOLD TRUMP" without real True meaning / feelings for this QUALIFIED man, now President. He is HAS DONE SO MANY IMPORTANT THINGS SO FAR & NO ATTENTIONS & THANKS FOR ANY OF IT ? For a couple - Blacks now have the lowest un-employment rate EVER !! Another "LOWER TAXES" Wake up please, make some sense of what your doing, thinking & stop listening to your DEMOCRAT (so called leaders) PULOSI & SCHMER - FOR ALL THEY SAY "IS LIES" - period ! I as a White man, voted for Obama (the 1st time) ALL HE DID WAS LIE WITH A SMILE ON HIS FACE ! In closing, your ALL BEING MISLED WITH CONTINUIOUS LYING. Amen.

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  2.   dodgethis2k says:
    Posted: 21 Nov 17

    The 'open, in your face racism' is coming from the left, NOT the right. This is straight out of Saul Alinksy's leftist playbook 'Rules for Radicals', which says to accuse your 'enemy' of what you yourself are guilty of. I've always been politically Conservative and I don't know any 'Nazi, KKK or fascist' people. What I see happening now is the left using those tactics (trying to stifle freedom of speech and assembly) by saying those they are attacking fall into those groups SIMPLY because we don't like your leftist politics. It won't work. If you keep pushing for a new civil war, you won't like the result. The only woman I've ever been engaged to was black. Probably not typical though: from 'the hood' (truth!) yet almost done with her PhD, worked 80 hours a week, hated basketball and rap, loved ice hockey and classic rock. After 8 years of the divisiveness of Obama, I'm certainly less likely to find a spouse here now (why am I here? I bought a lifetime membership after our relationship ended; they made me an offer I couldn't refuse). Leftist simply can't accept the results of an election they lost after attempting to steal it. News flash: non-whites CAN be racist too. And if the NFL protests weren't about the flag or anthem then why not hold them at half-time? No, I won't be reading follow up comments, but when I am forced to see headlines like this when I log in to a service I paid for...I will respond.

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    • Paganinifan says:
      Posted: 22 Nov 17

      I got that lifetime membership also! Those days are gone. Now it’s monthly for the newcomers LOL

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    • Deanelon says:
      Posted: 19 Dec 17

      Why would you not want to read follow up comments? Perhaps because it would point out that you are still dividing; left vs right? You still have stereotypes in your head. The 'hood and rap. Though I was not born there and dislike the music, as a whole, I respect individuals. Perhaps you should, as well.

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  3.   speedbump95 says:
    Posted: 17 Nov 17

    News flash racism and racist people have never gone anywhere. Let's face it if anyone who is not a conformed molded drone then they're subjected to some form of prejudice. If your poor, if a minority, a woman, and if your sexual orientation is not what some would agree with your juge.

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  4.   royal57 says:
    Posted: 15 Nov 17

    Yes we do and all the lies and un-truths in history about black people needs to be revealed all the evil due to slavery and exploitation for money there has been no apology or no compensation for blacks

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    • KingWanting says:
      Posted: 17 Nov 17

      Where is my compensation for my Irish blood? Treated worse than Africans at one stage. Or my Jewish blood? Or my Ukrainian blood? Persecuted by Nazis and Russians. I can go on and on.

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      • HP2016 says:
        Posted: 18 Nov 17

        Kingwanting,if i were you i would do some facts checking before making such ignorant comments.Irish were not slaves...That is a Myth! Jews were compensated.

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      • Paganinifan says:
        Posted: 18 Nov 17

        King Wanting - Exactly!

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      • ibijumba says:
        Posted: 21 Nov 17

        KingWanting You get the compensation every day you go to the supermarket buying cheap products by workers who work for one dollar a day. The slaves of the 21st century.

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      • ibijumba says:
        Posted: 21 Nov 17

        KingWanting Btw YES, the Jews were compensated, with the state of Israel. So are you now going to help compensate the Palestinians who are now stateless?They are not allowed to vote in the country where they have lived for thousands of years, and they are not allowed independence. I think I don't really get this right, because as I remember, the ones committing the holocaust were the Germans, and not the Palestinians. Or perhaps rather the Nazis who your beloved Donald Trump are so much in favor of.

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      • Deanelon says:
        Posted: 19 Dec 17

        Where is the justice or compensation for the blatant murders of innocent black men and women during the riots in NYC? Want to know what I'm speaking of? Watch the end of Gangs in. New York. True story.

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  5.   Paganinifan says:
    Posted: 14 Nov 17

    “The issue of the NFL and the national anthem is actually one small part of it,...” Because the majority of sports players are BLACK that makes Trump a racist for what he said about the kneeling thing? STFU! If it were a white man who kneeled and Trump said the same thing about it, what argument would you have for this “racism” crap? NONE! Throwing the word: racism and racist around has made the definitions of those words lose their meaning. Everything is “racist” now a days. You can’t say you don’t like rap music without being called “racist”. Pardon me but how many rap music followers like heavy metal? I guess those rap music followers are racist, too, right?

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    • SKIandSKY262 says:
      Posted: 15 Nov 17

      Exactly and thank you for having the courage to speak out...if this site operates like FB your account will be shut down. The Left has given up on logical arguments....this article itself starts out with a thinly veiled whining session over Clinton losing the election and then it wants us to "come together?" LOL. I noticed the article didn't display the author's name, if my writing skills were so bad I wouldn't sign my name to it either. The reason the Left resorts to name calling is because their motivations are based on emotion not logic and an emotional argument cannot be logically supported....they have to resort to calling the opposition "racist" because that's all they have. It's also a big reason why Trump is in office. He didn't cower when called that, he stood up to the Left's moral bullying, and people are tired of being called names for disagreeing.

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    • blackbelle01 says:
      Posted: 15 Nov 17

      Yes racism has seemed to increase with the new administration in office unfortunately.

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      • Paganinifan says:
        Posted: 16 Nov 17

        Where? Did you not read the response to my comment? The man tells it like it is; The Left are HYPOCRITES, plain and simple.

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      • KingWanting says:
        Posted: 17 Nov 17

        I think you will find the "increase" is from people actually commiting fraudulent hate crimes and then claiming it to be a Neo Nazi only for the truth to be revealed that it was the victim of this crime all along.

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      • SKIandSKY262 says:
        Posted: 19 Nov 17

        By "racism" you mean "not voting for Clinton" right? The term "racist" has been used so much by the Left it no longer has meaning. The term is so frightening to the self-hating white liberals that they bend over backwards to avoid being called that, no matter how silly the label for that particular instance. "Love America?" RACISM! "Support police?" RACISM! "Stand for the anthem?" RACISM! I love being white, I am proud of my race, I am conservative AND I still prefer to date women with a built-in tan, be they black, Latina, or Asian. To the Left "racist" is a political term. Unless a person is a socialist, they must be "racist." The inability to logically argue the merits of liberalism and the need to resort to name calling ("you are a racist!") is why Clinton lost the election.

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        • Lemmeholdya says:
          Posted: 20 Nov 17

          Exactly

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        • Briq says:
          Posted: 04 Jan 18

          Why do you love being white?

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        • TI300 says:
          Posted: 26 Jun 18

          That’s a good disconnected view of reality. Unfortunately, the alt right is a real thing and so is Jared Taylor and his band of racist “race realist” . I wish racism were “politically exclusive “. but it’s not. Everything is not based in politics so please knock it off!!

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    • Malcomb says:
      Posted: 16 Nov 17

      Prove that Trump is a racist! You can't because it's all mainstream media propaganda! I've never seen him do, or say anything racist actually, and I watch pretty closely!

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      • TI300 says:
        Posted: 26 Jun 18

        Trump making blanket statements toward Mexicans is very racist!! Especially when he said that an Indiana born judge was incapable of doing his job because he is Mexicans.

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    • Deanelon says:
      Posted: 19 Dec 17

      You are an example of someobe who is obtuse and enjoys it. Why are you even on this site if not to play into done racist sexual fantasy? Clearly, your narrow mind lacks the intelligence to see what is the truth. Stop dividing with this left, right, liberal crap.

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