Brandon Tatum is a police officer in Arizona, and a former college football player for Arizona State, who has become the darling of conservatives because of a video he made belittling those football players who are kneeling before the national anthem to bring light to police brutality and injustice in America.
In a six-and-a-half-minute clip, watched more than 50 million times, according to Alex Jones (yeah, he’s credible), Tatum, like many other people who choose to make the NFL protests about something they are not, says that it’s not the protest itself but the way people are protesting that he has an issue with.
“It’s not about the act of protesting, of believing in something and pursuing. It’s the way you’re doing it,” Tatum begins. “Listen, what does the American flag have to do with your perceived oppression? What does the national anthem have to do with these issues that people are bringing up? It’s a separate issue. The flag and the anthem have nothing to do with what you are talking about!”
So first Tatum is saying that black people are making up their oppression; then he’s saying that the flag has nothing to do with this so-called discrimination. On that he’s right. Flags can’t be racist, but people who choose to ignore oppression based on race (and their black lackeys) can.
He continues: “You’re talking about an anthem of hope and unity within this country … about a flag that represents hard work, dedication, blood, sweat and tears, sacrifice, and the thing that makes me most upset is that you have these people who turn around and take a knee and want to attribute all the negativity to the flag and the anthem and don’t want to attribute the positive.”
In the words of Kanye West, hannnh???? Didn’t Colin Kaepernick, who began this movement, say that he was kneeling during the anthem to bring light to the injustice of this country as it relates to its black citizens? So why would Tatum even fix his mouth to say the negativity is about the flag?
Tatum then notes that the flag gave black people “the opportunity to go from cornfields and picking cotton to the president of the United States of America,” and to go “from being segregated to you making millions of dollars to play sports. And you know who’s watching y’all? White people.”
Um. So the flag liberated people from slavery? Oh, I thought it was the tens of thousands of people who fought, bled and actually died during the Civil War and then the civil rights movement. Silly me.
“I’m sick of the lame excuses,” Tatum then says, and then has the nerve to of course bring up Martin Luther King Jr. “Because he did [his protesting] with respect, integrity.”
But as The Root writer Michael Harriot noted in the piece “How to Protest Without Offending White People,” 63 percent of people were against King’s tactics in 1966.
Tatum goes on: “You really care about black lives? You don’t need to be taking a knee. You need to be out there doing something in the community,” things like voting, passing legislation, joining the police and other productive endeavors.
“Do something about it!” Tatum bellows. “Quit taking a knee and protesting and crying like a baby, because all you’re doing is pissing people off. That’s all you’re doing.”
I thought Kaepernick was in the community donating millions of dollars and talking to young adults and volunteering. But I guess you can’t do both (that is, protest and be active in the community, which most community activists do).
The Tucson police officer then wonders what good has been accomplished since Kaepernick first took a knee last year. “Has unemployment changed in the black community? Has the abortion rate dropped? Has illegitimacy dropped? More entrepreneurs? More jobs?”
I’ll tell you what has happened (besides—dear God—pissing white people off!!!): More people have talked about injustice in America, and white people are being shown for the racists that they say they are not.
So there’s that.
If you can stomach the rest of his drivel, feel free. You can also catch Tatum on Fox News, of course.
I hope those 20 pieces of silver were worth it, Brandon.