As I celebrated Independence Day, yesterday, oddly I found myself ruminating over Nike' s recent decision to pull the Betsy Ross Flagged
sneakers from their stores, just because Colin Kaepernick was offended that the Betsy Ross Flag represented a time in our nations history when slavery was accepted. To my mind, that's a pretty ridiculous stretch. The Betsy Ross flag represents a lot of very positive things to a lot of good people. Hell, several of our Founding Fathers owned slaves. I believe the records show that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, etc. owned, or lived in households maintained by and operated through the efforts of slave labor. Should we discard the Constitution? Do we disavow the contributions of any who may have at one point been touched by or benefited from the efforts of slave labor. I think not. That would be woefully shortsighted and decicedly stupid. Don't get me wrong...I am a fire breathing opponent of even the concept of slavery and find it to be one of the most unfortunate and hateful threads that were woven into the fabric of the United States of America. However I realize the extended threat(s) of trying to pull such
hateful thread(s) from our cloakes of patriotism to be a fruitless undertaking and one that could lead to the unaveling of the very fabric of our society! Jeez Louise Nike, have you totally lost your good sense?
