Denying the Racial Divide

(NY Times)

"Those people should show some respect!"   That's the bottom line from older white callers to the talk show on the station where I work.   They piled on this morning, complaining about these rich NFL players failing to stand for the national anthem, saying, "I believe in free speech, but..."   What lacked in the pile-on left me a little sick to my stomach, feeling pessimistic over whether we'd ever move beyond this and hoping that the next generations would understand it all.   

If I ever got in the middle of that one-sided conversation and stated that the reaction to yet another weekend of Trump-generated breaking news was proof that a racial divide in this country exists, you know what the reaction would be.   They, almost to a person, would take that as a personal attack painting them a racist.   Calling someone racist just fuels the backlash.   Is Donald Trump a racist in his heart?   I can't say that.   Is he trying to take advantage of a racial divide?   Hell, yeah.  He knew just what he was doing with his double talk about blame "on both sides" at Charlottesville and his weekend "fire the son of a bitch" offensive against the NFL which predictably got push-back by players, owners and the NFL commissioner.   That mattered little to Trump, who then praised the NASCAR crowd for "respecting" our anthem, flag and the servicemen who fight for our country.   He literally pitted one sport and its ethnic demographic against another.   Slumping Fox News and right wing talk radio smell blood in the water.

Getting back to this morning's call-in show, I didn't hear one serious attempt to remotely understand why Colin Kaepernick and a few others risked their careers to make this statement calling out police brutality in the black community    You don't have to like "taking a knee", but at some point more people in the white majority have to at least ask why many minorities feel the need to resort to this.   Remember too that Trump was the one who caused 200 players on one Sunday to join what had been a very small group.

Really, is this pattern of right wing denial any different than the NRA refusing to even enter into a discussion about our gun culture or vested interests not wanting to even admit the existence of human activity hastening climate change?