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Topic subjectB(rian) Mitch supports. R*dskins first ever black player does not.
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=21&topic_id=108590&mesg_id=108793
108793, B(rian) Mitch supports. R*dskins first ever black player does not.
Posted by smutsboy, Tue Aug-30-16 03:49 PM
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dc-sports-bog/wp/2016/08/30/redskins-hall-of-famer-to-colin-kaepernick-understand-how-you-feel-but-stand/

Redskins Hall of Famer to Colin Kaepernick: ‘Understand how you feel, but stand’

At the risk of overloading on soundbites about Colin Kaepernick’s decision to remain seated during the national anthem, here are a couple of thoughtful responses from all-time Redskins greats.

Hall of Famer Bobby Mitchell, the franchise’s first black player, spoke recently with WJLA about the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, and in the course of the interview, he was also asked about Kaepernick.

“You can’t help but have mixed feelings,” Mitchell said, “but I would say to him that it’s still your country. We’ve had to do a lot of things we didn’t like, and this museum will speak to that, but if at all possible partner, stand. Understand how you feel, but stand. I get tears, just like anybody else, and I might have just got through being treated like a dog out on the street. I still stand.”

Mitchell, interestingly, was part of a group of athletes who met with Muhammad Ali in 1967 about his refusal to be inducted into the military.

“I’m patriotic,” Mitchell had told The Post in 1976, when he was working for the Redskins as director of professional scouting. “And we felt that it would reflect on all of us if Ali did not go into the military.”

“He was refusing to go in, and as a group, we thought that it might be a good idea for him to go on…because we didn’t understand his faith either at that time,” Mitchell told ESPN 980 earlier this year, after Ali’s death.

But Ali convinced the group he was sincere in his religious beliefs, and they wouldn’t be able to change his mind.

Meanwhile, another former Redskins great — running back Brian Mitchell — had a different opinion about the Kaepernick controversy.


“I have to applaud him, because I know he understood that it would be a lot of backlash coming from that,” Brian Mitchell said on The Dean Obeidallah Show on SiriusXM. “And I agree with him, liberty and justice for all. It’s not just for a certain aspect of this society. And it’s amazing to me that everyone can protest, but when anybody that’s not of white America protests, then we want to say ‘Shut up,’ or ‘Go back to your country.’ Well, I’ve been in this country for 48 years. I’m 48 years old. And I know a lot of people that are in this country, your nationality came here at the same time mine came here. Unfortunately, mine was forced to come, and yours came to try and find something.

“The United States of America was built by different people, and we all have that right: if we don’t like something, we can protest it,” Brian Mitchell went on. “People say ‘Take race out of it.’ You can’t take race out of it, because when you look on Twitter, you see it’s nothing but things about race. He’s getting called everything but the child of God, told to go back to Africa. … I think he has a different perspective on what America is than I do, because I didn’t grow up with a white family, as he did. So he was able to get inside a little bit and also see the intricate racism that goes on in this country. So I’m going to say I applaud him for doing it, knowing what would come about, but I’m not going to say that is what everyone should do. Colin felt strongly enough to do that, and you have to applaud a guy for that.”