Author Topic: Bestie Ross Nike shoe cancelled because of ties with Slavery  (Read 1392 times)

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Offline kimmy

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That's true, but it also doesn't mean the Gadsden flag or Red Ensign or Betsy Ross flag should be primarily associated with these nutty groups.  It's obviously a much different thing than the confederate flag, where the confederacy's primary purpose of existence was to defend the right to hold slaves.

Nike banning the Betsy Ross flag is like that Sir John A pub in Kingston changing its name.  Sure its up to the business but it's still dumb mission-creep and sets precedents others will follow and others will feel emboldened to try to enforce. Luckily we live in a free capitalist society and consumers will reign in the end, but we can still have an opinion on it.


Maybe at earlier points in history the Gadsden flag symbolized something noble, but since 2008 the Gadsden flag has been completely co-opted by the far right.  If you're flying a Gadsden flag in 2019, people are going to associate you with that element whether that was your intention or not.

If Nike had in 2008 put out apparel commemorating the Gadsden flag just as it was becoming the emblem of the Tea Partyists and the far right fringe, it would have been a PR debacle for Nike.  They're trying to avoid that happening in 2019 because if the Betsy Ross flag is in the process of being adopted by far right fringe groups, the last thing Nike wants is for their brand to be associated with those goons.


If somebody wants to fly or wear a Betsy Ross flag for whatever reason, they don't need to pay Nike $300 for the privilege. Nike doesn't own it, they aren't banning it, and they can't prevent anybody from using it. All Nike is doing is ensuring that their carefully-built brand name doesn't get dragged into whatever controversies await the Betsy Ross flag in the days ahead.

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Offline Queefer Sutherland

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Maybe at earlier points in history the Gadsden flag symbolized something noble, but since 2008 the Gadsden flag has been completely co-opted by the far right.  If you're flying a Gadsden flag in 2019, people are going to associate you with that element whether that was your intention or not.

Well that's too bad because the Gadsden flag is one of the most badass flags of all-time.

Is this song now racist 30 years later?  Is the cover of the Black Album featuring the Gadsden snake now racist?

"Nipples is one of the great minds of our time!" - Bubbermiley

Offline Queefer Sutherland

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It's kind of like how i can't wear rainbows anymore because people will think i'm gay.  Whereas decades ago a rainbow just meant a rainbow.
"Nipples is one of the great minds of our time!" - Bubbermiley

guest18

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Nobody who isn't gay ever wore rainbows though.
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Offline kimmy

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Well that's too bad because the Gadsden flag is one of the most badass flags of all-time.

Is this song now racist 30 years later?  Is the cover of the Black Album featuring the Gadsden snake now racist?

No and no.  But if Tea Party tards started playing that song at their rallies, Metallica would probably be pretty pissed.  Also I'm not sure but I don't think Metallica really supports that kind of ra-ra nationalism... I think the song may be intended ironically or sarcastically.


I think the Gadsden flag is awesome, but it has become associated with a movement.  I think that the Tea Party movement is pretty much finished, and maybe the Gadsden flag's association with the far right will fade as well. But at present if you display it, people will still assume you're a Tea Partyist and assume everything that comes with it about you as well.







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Offline wilber

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I don’t blame Nike and I am in no position to criticize Kaepernick for feeling the way he does but the parallels between this and Macdonald are clear.

In the case of Macdonald, he was largely responsible for the residential school system but he was also more responsible for this country’s present shape than any other person. But for him, BC would be part of the US, Canada wouldn’t have a West Coast and there would be no discussions of pipelines to tidewater.

In the case of America’s first national flag, instead of it being about the birth of a country with all its greatness and warts, it has become just about racism and slavery.

One might say we should take a more balanced view of both and recognize both the good and bad but that isn’t what happens, there always has to be a winner and loser when it comes to ideology. In the case of Macdonald, it is all about residential schools so his memory must be erased, Canada suppresses a big piece of it’s history to be replaced with an alternate truth. Canada loses. In the case of the Betsy Ross flag, it is the first Stars and Stripes. America is voluntarily giving its first national flag to a bunch of white supremacists. White supremacists win.

The Gadsden flag was a revolutionary flag but it was never a national flag.
"Never trust a man without a single redeeming vice" WSC

Offline Queefer Sutherland

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Nobody who isn't gay ever wore rainbows though.

If you're a girl they did.
"Nipples is one of the great minds of our time!" - Bubbermiley

Offline Queefer Sutherland

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No and no.  But if Tea Party tards started playing that song at their rallies, Metallica would probably be pretty pissed.  Also I'm not sure but I don't think Metallica really supports that kind of ra-ra nationalism... I think the song may be intended ironically or sarcastically.

That's not true, it's a legit patriotic song.  If you watch the documentary of Metallica recording the Black Album the song is on, you can see them hanging the Gadsden Flag in the studio.
"Nipples is one of the great minds of our time!" - Bubbermiley

Offline Queefer Sutherland

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I don’t blame Nike and I am in no position to criticize Kaepernick for feeling the way he does but the parallels between this and Macdonald are clear.

In the case of Macdonald, he was largely responsible for the residential school system but he was also more responsible for this country’s present shape than any other person. But for him, BC would be part of the US, Canada wouldn’t have a West Coast and there would be no discussions of pipelines to tidewater.

What most people don't know or realize is that Canada was born out of fear of invasion from the USA.  Canada was a bunch of separate colonies prior to 1867.  20 years earlier in 1848 the US went to war with Mexico, beat them, and annexed Texas, and were expanding westward.  Then the US civil war ended in 1865, and the US was left with this massive standing army of trained soldiers who now had nothing to do.  The US then bought Alaska from Russia in 1867.  It's no coincidence Canadian colonies felt the need that same year to unite in order to defend themselves against a possible US invasion.

If not for MacDonald's efforts, Canada could right now be America's 51st state and we'd all be saluting Trump as our POTUS.  For the indigenous who rightfully aren't so pleased with how Canada/MacDonald has treated them, ask them how the think the likes of Trump, the Bushes, Reagan etc, and a country filled with anti-black slave-owning Jim Crow white supremacists would have treated them.
"Nipples is one of the great minds of our time!" - Bubbermiley

Offline waldo

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https://twitter.com/Kaepernick7/status/1146826827593342977

Quote from: Frederick Douglass, American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman
What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine…There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Offline Queefer Sutherland

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There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Yes there is, almost every single one of them.  His own brothers in Africa raided rival villages and enslaved Africans to sell to the white slave traders. That doesn't mean slavery/Jim Crow wasn't horrific and the worst of humanity.

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What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? This Fourth of July is yours, not mine.

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." - Lincoln

States in the North started banning slavery between 1777-1804 after the American Revolution based on the equality principles of the Declaration of  Independence of July 4th, 1776.  As per above, about a million Americans died during Civil War trying to free the rest of the slaves in the South to uphold the Declaration principles laid out on July 4th, 1776.

I get Kaepernick's point, I just don't think his narrative is a unifying or entirely constructive one.  To wipe your hands of a nation that both enslaved your ancestors and fought & died en masse to free them...why not embrace the good and condemn the bad?  Why throw the baby out with the bathwater?
"Nipples is one of the great minds of our time!" - Bubbermiley

Offline Queefer Sutherland

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White woman athlete won't sing US anthem in protest:

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U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe did not join her teammates in singing the national anthem before the team’s opening match against Thailand in the Women’s World Cup on Tuesday.

According to multiple news reports, Rapinoe stood on silently as other members of the women's national soccer team sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” prior to kick-off.  The act comes several years after Rapinoe became the first white player to kneel during the national anthem after former San Francisco 49ers star Colin Kaepernick in 2016 began the protest to bring attention to police brutality and racial inequality.

Since then, the soccer player has refused to join her teammates in singing the anthem, including at another match-up her team recently played in Reims, France, according to Fox News.

When discussing her decision to protest the national anthem in an interview in May, Rapinoe called herself a “walking protest” to Trump’s policies and said she views her decision to kneel during the anthem as a "F you" to his administration. "I feel like it's kind of defiance in and of itself to just be who I am and wear the jersey, and represent it," Rapinoe said then. "Because I'm as talented as I am, I get to be here, you don't get to tell me if I can be here or not.” “So it's kind of a good ‘F you' to any sort of inequality or bad sentiments that the [Trump] administration might have towards people who don't look exactly like him. Which, God help us if we all looked like him,” she added. “Scary. Really scary." “Colin Kaepernick very much inspired me, and inspired an entire nation, and still does, to actually think about these things,” she continued.
https://twitter.com/yourrightscamp/status/1138876605978238976

Instead this a better way to protest? 

"Nipples is one of the great minds of our time!" - Bubbermiley

Offline Queefer Sutherland

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Is this really where we're heading?  They're renaming streets, schools, and burning artwork now (well, painting over), when will they start burning books?  They'll ban books before starting to burn them.

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San Francisco to paint over historic George Washington mural

San Francisco will spend up to $600,000 to paint over historical artwork at a public school depicting the life of George Washington, a mural once seen as educational and innovative but now criticized as racist and degrading for its depiction of black and Native American people.

The “Life of Washington” was painted by Victor Arnautoff, one of the foremost muralists in the San Francisco area during the Depression. The San Francisco School Board’s decision to paint over the 83-year-old mural is prompting some to worry that other artwork from the so-called New Deal era could face a similar fate because of changing sensitivities.

https://apnews.com/9f3037c7ec9d48a286059ac8f9975afe

The entire west coast of north america is infected with this kind of thinking.  California, Oregon (Portland etc), Washington state (Seattle etc), British Colombia...it's a disease of the intellect. 

The progressive left not long ago was fiercely anti-censorship and pro free-speech. They battled to have our art not censored (TV, film, music/lyrics, violent video games, comic books etc).  Conservatives wanted to ban "rap music" and "disgusting music videos" and "pornography" etc.  Now it's flipped and the progressives want to censor everything "shocking" to their sensibilities, they fiercely pro-censorship and conservatives & old progressive left are fighting for free speech.  What have we become?
"Nipples is one of the great minds of our time!" - Bubbermiley

guest18

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People who see a society composed of either "progressive left" or "right wing" and who then marvel at the hypocrisy of individuals we see in those groups not perfectly conforming to the stereotype we have preassigned them?

Offline Queefer Sutherland

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People who see a society composed of either "progressive left" or "right wing" and who then marvel at the hypocrisy of individuals we see in those groups not perfectly conforming to the stereotype we have preassigned them?

I don't understand what you're trying to say. I also never said there are only 2 types of ideologies in society.  I also referred to "the old progressive left" which still exists, then there's the new "social justice" progressives, there's moderates, libertarians, alt-right folks, Christian conservatives, regular old fiscal Thatcher/Reagan-style conservatives, communists etc. etc.
"Nipples is one of the great minds of our time!" - Bubbermiley