All of this is making my head hurt, but apparently, it is a thing for right-winged zealots who are so upset that grown men have taken a knee during their precious national anthem to make videos of themselves burning jerseys and team paraphernalia.
Just burn that shit. Why do you have to make a video showing yourself burning that shit? Oh, that’s right, because then it wouldn’t be a statement. A statement is what everyone who’s been trying to hijack this movement and make it about patriotism has been trying to do since Colin Kaepernick took a knee in protest of racial injustice and police brutality.
Nevertheless, some Washington, D.C., football-team fan posted a video of himself burning all of his Washington, D.C., football-team stuff.
He should’ve burned them a long time ago, like, say, when news emerged that team owner Daniel Snyder contributed $1 million to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Or he could’ve burned all of the team’s stuff when Native Americans argued that the team name was not only offensive but racist.
Nope, this fan was just fine with all of that, but players not kneeling for the precious flag is where he draws the line.
Washington, D.C.’s NFL team has a history of racism.
I wrote about this last year after Kaepernick took a knee and D.C.’s football team did nothing. Since that time, I no longer use the team’s name, so the passage below has been edited to reflect the current changes:
Washington’s football team has historically been one of the most racist organizations since its inception. In 1932, George Preston Marshall purchased the Boston Braves and moved the team to Washington in 1937. He changed the team’s name to the current Washington football team name. Marshall was not only a notorious racist, but also blatant and unapologetic in his feelings toward blacks.
When he proposed to his wife, Corrine, in 1936, he arranged for a group of African-American performers to sing “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.” He also had two black women dressed in Gone With the Wind costumes bring them mint juleps.
The Washington football team was not only the last team to integrate under Marshall’s watch—in 1962—but it did so only after the Kennedy administration issued a threatening letter saying that if it did not allow black players on the team, the government would revoke the lease for the stadium, which was built on federal land.
Later that year, the Washington football team would draft Syracuse’s top running back, Ernie Davis, who refused to play for the team because it was so racist.
Marshall was so racist that even after his death, he stipulated in his will that not a single dollar from the Washington football team’s foundation be spent to serve “any purpose which supports or employs the principle of racial integration in any form.”
And the racism has been passed around from owner to owner.
The team name is an obvious racial slur against Native Americans, but current team owner Daniel Snyder not only refuses to address the issue respectfully, but adamantly defends the continued use of the name.
Well, burn all that shit, and I don’t care why you’re burning it, so long as it’s burned, since Washington’s football team has historically been racist trash, but I know you don’t want to hear that. You’d rather get all sad about the flag. And now that you’ve done the “White Supremacist Burn Something Challenge,” you can make a video of yourself in non-Washington, D.C., football-team gear saying how much football you won’t watch for the D.