Sunday reading- listen to the Pack's Lance Kendricks

Been a busy weekend over here with friends in for Badger football and other outings. But I wanted to direct your attention to a great feature from the Green Bay Press-Gazette's Ryan Wood, who talked with current Packer and former Badger Lance Kendricks about his decision to sit during the national anthem before the Pack's game with the Bengals 3 weeks ago.

Kendricks is a Milwaukee native whose grandparents and uncles served in the military during wars, and while the article mentions that he had been racially profiled, Kendricks indicated his protest was more related to the fact that President Trump was ignoring the disaster in Puerto Rico, where his wife's family is from.

Some of the stranded are your wife’s family. One uncle waited in line 12 hours for gas. You want to make a difference. Maybe, you think, your platform can raise awareness.

After the storm, you constantly check the news for updates. President Donald Trump is speaking at a rally in Huntsville, Ala., and you anticipate encouraging words from a president whose authority extends to Puerto Rico. You hear something entirely different. “Son of a bitch,” Trump curses. He doesn’t mean the hurricane.

“That broke the camel’s back,” Kendricks says.

Wood's article continues with Kendricks being annoyed with that fans who tell athletes to 'Dance fucker, dance!" "Stick to sports" are forgetting that atheles are people as well, and just because they play football, it doesn't mean they are cut off from the outside world. And Wood notes that if you remove "football player" from Lance Kendricks' biography, he still has a resume and background that would be impressive, and familiar to a lot of other people living and working in Wisconsin.

Lance Kendricks is you. A few inches taller. Certainly faster and stronger. He’s a professional athlete, but Kendricks could’ve been a financial analyst. He earned his diploma from the University of Wisconsin, choosing economics over an art degree, he said, because of the rigorous coursework.

He wishes there was no need to use the national anthem in protest. Kendricks was a Cub Scout. In uniform, he saluted during the pledge of allegiance. He learned how to fold the flag.

Kendricks left the Scouts when sports conflicted, but he never lost an appetite for world events. It doesn’t matter how much money he makes playing a game, Kendricks says. He is a person with multiple dimensions....

“People don’t understand how smart football players are,” Kendricks says. “I think people just think we’re idiots, we’re dumb jocks from high school with the letterman jacket that cheated on tests and just got good grades, and went to college and lived their life. It’s like, no, we’re extremely smart.

Do you care why he is doing this?

There is also some severe white privilege in play among people who get agitated over (mostly minority) football players making gestures during the national anthem. Why is a white person's belief in what proper conduct is during the anthem and what the flag stands for supposed to be standard in this country anyway? And why is another point of view supposed to be viewed as "less than" and disregarded out of hand? Why don't these white people want to at least listen and find out why these protests are happening? Is it because they're too arrogant and/or weak-minded to want to find out, because it might cause them to question what's going on in this country, and their own values and status in life?

Look, I think a lot of the whole "anthem protest" issue is played out. People are forgetting the main point of the protests- to bring attention to the fact that many Americans are not being treated equally and with respect, and instead trying to make it about their own actions and agendas. But it is the height of white entitlement to think that they get to make the ground rules for what people like Lance Kendricks can or cannot do, and what is or is not damaging to the NFL's image (I'm looking at you Jerry (I Sign Woman-Beaters) Jones).

Again, read the long and well-written piece from Ryan Wood on Lance Kendricks. It's worth looking at to get some perspective before today's Packers-Vikes game.