EL BARRIO, EL FALLS – Happy Monday Everybody! You know it’s summertime so technically the days are getting longer but man, it’s feels like the weeks are getting longer too. Last two weeks, I felt almost like a whole year. It’s just been relentless, there has been so much going on but just wrap your head around the fact that we are closer to the end of the last Super Bowl then we are to Christmas. Anyway on the menu for today, we will talk about: NASCAR And The BLM movement and The Return of the Kaepernick.
NASCAR And The BLM Movement : For the first part of NASCAR meets BLM, which is an insane amount of acronyms but anyway I want to talk about Bubba Wallace. He got a lot of recognition recently from running back Alvin Kamara of the New Orleans Saints and I kind of very much agree with him. Having experience in situations were you are the only black guy in a room full of white people (work, school, sports field) and it’s just you and they are talking about something that involves the Black community (like a CRJ class or Business Strategy) and you can feel people expecting you to say something but personally you may not really care to talk cause its too much pressure to be a lone spokesman or the issue is not a priority to you. However, because it affects the black community you feel like you have to say something because everybody’s expecting you to be this voice or to have some sort of input so it’s not easy. Having been that person, I have a lot of admiration for Bubba Wallace speaking up in a situation where he is the only African-American full time driver in NASCAR and it’s so lonely. It would have been much easier to stay quiet, wait til it blew over but he insisted that this must be talked about. So there he was with his Stars and Stripes face mask and Black Lives Matter T-shirt stating that this is a concern and this is something that has to be talked about in NASCAR, and the sport has to look at its handling of this thing. Which of course led to the removal of the Confederate flag football at NASCAR events and stadiums.
I want to say kudos to NASCAR for that move but much more for sticking with it because there was an uproar from fans and politicians, but they didn’t blink, they stood by the principle, and that this isn’t about the fan necessarily and this is definitely about a movement in something that needs to be corrected. Even so much as when another driver said they were retiring because of this and found it upsetting. NASCAR said thank you and have a good day but we ain’t budging. It’s not easy considering NASCAR’s fan base is probably as uninterested in the BLM movement as you would figure, it was a bold call that has to be respected.
The Return of the Kaep: Will Kae come back? Now everybody agrees he probably deserves an apology from Rodger Good-(for nothing)- ell and the owners for being Blacklist-ed, but you have to wonder if he comes back. He has been out of work almost 5 years now and I don’t know if he may just end up getting old. He was the public face that started this movement and drew attention to it as an apparent wrong before it was cool and now that the fruits of this movement has happened and we are seeing athletes everywhere standing up in support of kneeling, it might be that, he just doesn’t get the opportunity to come back and that’s the end of that. I’d like for him to come back and just have a great showing an insult the ow long the blacklisting was but you never know. Like I said, he needs it but he may just go like Moses.
Well thanks for reading and come back tomorrow for Big Ben Whitney. But first, feel free to comment below.
