LeBron James is perpetuating the problem
As he is wont to do, LeBron James once again took aim at President Trump, blaming him for using sports to divide the country.
[Trump is] dividing us and what I've noticed over the last few months, he's kinda used sport to kinda divide us, and that's something that I can't relate to because I know that sport was the first time I ever was around someone white and I got the opportunity to see them and learn about them and they got an opportunity to learn about me and we became very good friends.
Set aside for a moment the poor grammar and the fact that Donald Trump did not start this fight. The hubbub over NFL players protesting the National Anthem began with Colin Kaepernick "kneeling" in 2016. Several other players and teams took on this protest, well before Donald Trump was elected president.
While many leftists want to claim now that it was never Colin Kaepernick's intention to disrespect the flag, and by extension our country, this line of reasoning is wholly without merit. Kaepernick's explanation of why he knelt;
I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.
Colin Kaepernick has the First Amendment right to express his views. As a corporate entity, the NFL has the right, as exercised in countless other circumstances, to prohibit this and other players from using the National Anthem to protest for social justice. Conversely, the NFL also has the right to permit teams and players to continue to in their protest. Fans have the right to reward or punish the league, in the free market, based on their perception of the protest.
Let's dissect Kaepernick's comment. His blanket assertion that our flag and country oppress "black people" and "people of color" a falsehood. Black persons and people of color have more opportunity in America than any other nation on the planet. Are some black persons oppressed? Sure, but I would suggest that if they sought out the source of their oppression, they would find it at the hands of the liberal urban plantation masters and the ghetto pimps (Jackson, Sharpton).
Kaepernick's assertion that cops are getting away with murder is specious at best. Murder as a term is a legal finding, of which no police officer in recent memory has been convicted, let alone tried. The statistics show in fact that white perps (of crime) are shot by police at twice the rate of black perps.
President Trump has offered for LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or whoever, to present to him a case of injustice perpetrated against a black person or person of color.
I'm going to ask all of those people to recommend to me – because that's what they're protesting – people that they think were unfairly treated by the justice system. And I understand that. I'm going to ask them to recommend to me people that were unfairly treated and I'm gonna take a look at those applications and if I find and my committee finds that they've been unfairly treated than we'll pardon them. Or at least let them out.
Asked if LeBron would sit down with the president, to discuss the matter, LeBron responded, "I would never sit across from him. I'd sit across from Barack, though."
It seems to me that Colin Kaepernick created an ad hominem argument, premised on falsehoods, and that LeBron James is content to perpetuate the division by refusing to address the very argument that Colin Kaepernick made to begin with. President Trump has offered willingness to do so.
To Donald Trump's credit, while he did not start this fight, he has sought to accentuate the division: those who love America and those who don't.