2020-06-04

It's only "systemic racism" when the victim isn't white

Memo to Dave Naylor: Whites like Justine Sacco and Michael Richards and James Damore and Kelly Services and Dr. David Mackereth and Roger Scruton have all never gotten a "second chance" for "mistakes" far less serious than what Carter or even Kaepernick are guilty of.

In other words, this sort of blather below is taking what is a general principle of society (Safeway cashiers have to pass a security background check, for example) and trying to make it sound like it exclusively or even predominantly a racial issue.

Exactly the sort of lies that the #BlackLivesMatter crowd have been spreading through sympathetic media without anybody being allowed to counteract it.

“I learned,” he began, before pausing. “That the National Football League is one of the few places ...”

Another pause.

“Where a young black man ...”

Still another pause.

“Can make a whole bunch of mistakes ...”

Shorter pause.

“And still get a second chance.”

The exchange stood out because I hadn’t asked anything about race. No one had been steering the conversation in that direction during Carter’s media availability

What it told me is that Carter, who had a series of problems with drugs and alcohol early in his career – mistakes that differentiate him from the acts of social conscience that got Colin Kaepernick exiled from the NFL – related his NFL experience to what he knew to be true in so much else of America. He understood he was provided a wider margin of error in professional football because of what he could deliver on the field.

He wasn’t so much making a statement about the NFL, but about life beyond the NFL. Carter was acknowledging that those second chances aren’t afforded to black men in many other professions or walks of life.