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Several players from the University of Mississippi basketball team have had a knee injury to the national anthem before their match on Saturday, in protest of the holding of the team. a Confederate rally near the arena.
Initially, six players were kneeling at the launch of the "stars and stripes". At the end of the national anthem, two more of their teammates joined them.
"The majority was simply that we had seen one of our teammates do it and that we did not want him to be alone," said Breein Tyree, player of Ole Miss, at a conference. press conference at the end of the match. "We're just fed up with these hate groups coming into our school and describing our campus as if we had these hate groups in our current school."
The symbolic gesture of the players – a nod to the NFL protests against racism and police brutality that had characterized the wars of modern American culture for years – fueled a controversial debate over Ole Miss's letter. campus (not to mention many other schools) on the legacy of Confederate iconography still celebrated and on display in the premises of the university. For months, student groups have tried to force the university to remove several confederate monuments currently housed on campus, but the statues are still in place. In response, a hundred protesters, many of them dressed in Confederate clothing, marched Saturday on campus to pay tribute to these monuments honoring fallen Confederate soldiers.
It's a great move for players to kneel in Mississippi, where Confederation's legacy is so entrenched in state culture that the stars and bars of Confederation remain under the flag of the United States. 'State. N.C.A.A. and the SEC both refuse to hold championships in the state because of the images of the flag. And although Olle Miss coach Kermit Davis said earlier that he would not allow his players to kneel at the national anthem, he gave them his support on Saturday.
"All of this was about the hate groups that came into our community and tried to spread racism and sectarianism in our community," said Davis. "It has created a lot of tension on our campus. I think our players made the emotional decision to show these people that they are not welcome on our campus. And we respect the freedom of our players and their ability to choose that. "
Both demonstrations denounce the wars of latent cultures of America
The two protests that took place Saturday on the Ole Miss campus represent two parts of the ongoing cultural battle against the legacy of racism and oppression in America: the first is the controversy over players of the National Football League kneeling under the national anthem; the second concerns the battle of Confederate statues and their symbolism.
Both were not at the root of the cultural clash – they are just benchmarks in the country's general calculation of racism and violence against communities of color.
In 2016, leading athletes began to kneel at the national anthem in a move initiated by Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, first kneeled after speaking to a former NFL player who had served as a green beret and who told him he was kneeling was both a sign of respect and protest. This was as a result of several shots highly publicized by the police. Kaepernick hoped to use his platform to raise public awareness of racism and police brutality. Soon, this non-violent demonstration is installed. Jane Coasten of Vox has more than the history of the origin:
Other NFL players began joining the rally at the start of the regular season. In total, about 200 players have knelt or been sitting at the national anthem since the protests began in August 2016. Other sports athletes, as well as professionals, have done the same. women's football player Megan Rapinoe. Even some high school football teams started to kneel during the anthem. Although the NFL did not even have any players on the field for the national anthem before 2009 (and that anthem is not traditionally part of the TV show presented to supporters at home) , the subject has become a lightning rod for discussions about race, inequalities. and police brutality …
But while some conservatives perceived Kaepernick's protest as an expression of freedom of expression, many right-wing members did not see it this way, considering the protests as an example of "politicization." of sport "or" symbolic of the way in which liberalism has been allowed to spread ". uncontrolled in our culture "and, most importantly, revealing a disproportionate anti-Americanism, NFL players" disrespecting "the American flag and war veterans who fought to protect it. In October 2017, Vice President Mike Pence left a 49ers / Indianapolis Colts game when members of the 49ers knelt during the anthem. And some conservatives have called for a boycott of the NFL games in response.
Since then, the NFL protests have dropped significantly – Kaepernick, who claimed that the NFL had decided to stick to the blacklist because of its political protests, reached an agreement with the League – but discussions on race and slavery did not take place.
In recent years, a number of cities and states have taken a critical look at their Confederate monuments and celebrated personalities who fought to maintain white supremacy. (Some members of the Ole Miss student group are part of these groups.) Some cities and schools have chosen to remove these statues from public spaces in order to elicit violent reactions.
As Lopez de Vox explains in Germany in 2017, much of America is still struggling with the legacy of racial oppression in our country. – "But not without a passionate, sometimes violent reaction" from those who say the country needs symbols of white heritage and culture:
The argument is simple: Confederation has fought to maintain slavery and white supremacy in the United States, and it is not something the country should honor or commemorate in any way.
Critics argue, however, that these monuments actually speak of the pride of the South and not the commemoration of a pro-slavery rebellion movement. They argue that trying to eliminate Confederate symbols has the effect of erasing part of American history.
Protests and counter-demonstrations against Confederate monuments in the heart of the Ole Miss campus have grown in recent weeks. Now that the school's renowned athletes have joined the group, the campus has become the microcosm – in many ways – of the ongoing battle over racism and the legacy of white supremacy that the rest of the states United States has not yet reconciled.
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