Colin Kaepernick, Rosa Parks, Muhammad Ali and Curt Flood

by Paradise

Colin Kaepernick just became an instant national hero in the Black community, risking his career like Muhammad Ali, taking a stand or a seat like Rosa Parks, and shocking the sports world by doing what the vast majority of modern day athletes wouldn’t dare even think about doing and jeopardize their million dollar contracts by speak out against injustice.

Curt Flood from Oakland set all American athletes free by going to court and winning a lawsuit that enabled them to negotiate their services to the highest bidder instead of being forced to remain on the same (plantation) team their entire careers and being paid whatever bones the (sports world’s) billionaire slave owners decided to toss them. In return for jump starting the modern era of big-money sports, Curt Flood was blackballed or, we should say, whiteballed from the league, and buried deep into the unmentionable shadows of sports history.

But Curt, like Colin, came from Panther Country, the Greater Oakland San Francisco Bay Area, where such free radicals and statements are made, where Beyonce came back to Black, where Congresswoman Barbara Lee made her lone wolf vote not to give the president carte blanche to bomb wherever he chose after 911, and where Ron Dellums and Keith Carson spearheaded the anti-apartheid movement. So if you didn’t know, now you know! This is how we roll!

So WE GOT YOUR BACK, CAP! If the so-called progressive San Francisco 49ers fire Colin Kaepernick for choosing not to stand during the national anthem because America is acting like Black lives don’t matter (still, after all these centuries!), the 49ers are finished in Black America! for all time! Ticket and merchandising sales will plummet! And Black ballplayers will begin to formalize their own professional football, basketball and baseball leagues again, like back in the days before INTEGRATION!

WE GOT YOUR BACK, CAP!

Paradise is president of the International Black Writers & Artists Local 5 in Oakland and was honored by the City of Oakland with “Paradise Day,” on Oct. 6, 2007. Find him on Facebook at Paradise Freejah Lovesupreme.