It was a pleasure joining Eugene Puryear once again on his show By Any Means Necessary: “In the second segment of the show Dr. Jared Ball, father and husband, professor at Morgan State University, and curator of imixwhatilike.org joins the show to talk about Richard Spencer‘s speech at the University of Florida that focused on the United States of America as a white ethno-state, the timidness of most white Americans to address white supremacy, and the liberal praise for Eminem‘s BET Awards performance. The pair also talks about American exceptionalism’s response to Colin Kaepernick‘s National Anthem protests, the long history of the US government cracking down on black radical movements, and the white hero motif used in American culture towards social and political justice movements.”
Check out the entire show here!
“Sports is a major factor in ideological control, says sociologist Noam Chomsky. After all, people have minds; they’ve got to be involved in something, and it’s important to make sure they’re involved in things that have absolutely no significance. So professional sports is perfect. It instills the right ideas of passivity. It’s a way of keeping people diverted from issues like who runs society and who makes the decisions on how their lives are to be led”Another feature of professional sports is its indoctrination of irrational jingoism or fanatical patriotism [ American flag waving, Air Force planes flying over stadiums, singing of The Star Spangled Banner whose melody is derived from a sly 1700’s saloon paean to drinking and sex.] And when it comes to Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem protest, an expected response– “Any time there is unrest in the slave cabins,’ run along sonny, you bother me”. America never wants to talk about the real issues – police brutality against black and brown people throughout the nation; but place emphasis on the way he’s protesting, dishonoring the flag and the U.S military. Kaepernick’s protest is aligned with an ancestor, the brilliant writer James Baldwin when he eloquently stated during a Cambridge University [ 1965 ] debate with conservative William F. Buckley Jr. “It comes as a great shock, around the age of five or six or seven, to discover the flag to which you have pledged allegiance along with everybody else has not pledged allegiance to you”.