There are bright lights, such as the Rev. Alveda King, the niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who will be honored this weekend. She has identified these problems in the community for years and has absolutely refused to go along with the Democratic leadership package.
"Based on what most people could see, pretty much nothing, other than lost ticket sales. People go to football games to be entertained, not to be lectured by their supposed betters in another dreary virtue-signaling game.
"This is why longtime cultural observer and critic Shelby Steele thinks black protests have lost their power in his must-read op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal.
The recent protests by black players in the National Football League were rather sad for their fruitlessness. They may point to the end of an era for black America, and for the country generally – an era in which protest has been the primary means of black advancement in American life.
"The reason, he concludes, is that it's hard to protest The Man's power when you yourself are now the man. As Steele puts it, freedom has arrived, and with freedom, accountability. Black protesters must now be judged on the actual merit of their protests, instead of just the identity reality the protesters' black race, which up until now, has pretty much sent whites scurrying. They aren't scurrying anymore in deference to the protests; they just aren't buying tickets.
"This demonstrates how hollow these protests from pampered, millionaire athletes, honored on the field for their talents – with no affirmative action to ensure white representation, which is how it would go if affirmative action were enforced in football – really fail to resonate among the captive audiences of live football games. In the past, Steele notes, protests really did take courage. Black protesters were fired, beaten, fined, jailed, and killed. Today, anyone who goes out there as a black protester enjoys the pleasures of virtue-signaling and laps up the attention from the cultural elites." . . .
