#VinegarMotherBand playing next Sat. 10/7 at @RockwoodNYC - Stage 1 10pm 196 Allen St (LES/NYC)

We are super excited to be playing next Sat. 10/7 at @RockwoodNYC - Stage 1 10pm 196 Allen St (LES/NYC) during the @MondoNewYork Oct 4-8th

Educator Jane Elliott Talks Trump, Kaepernick and Fixing Racism

At first glance Jane Elliott is all grandma: There’s the crown of fuzzy white hair, the wire-framed spectacles, the deliberate but steady gait, and the wisdom lines that punctuate her alabaster face.

But step inside her cozy, sun-drenched home in a gated senior community near Sun City, California — likely one of the whitest zip codes in America — and she shatters all senior citizen stereotypes. It’s probably safe to assume that not many 80-something, white women from Iowa can say they’ve made a “cameo appearance” in a rap music video (she’s a “real life American hero,” Grammy winner T.I. has said), and even fellow Atlanta MC Killer Mike has gushed over meeting her.

The titles in her bookcase, situated along a far wall in her homey living room, may hint to why they find her so fascinating: "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander; "White Awareness" by Judy H. Katz; "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America" by John McWhorter; "Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative" by David Brock; and most importantly — in her eyes, at least — "The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea" by Robert Wald Sussman.

Spending time in her Sun City home, Jane Elliott is an outspoken advocate against racism. She first implemented her "brown eyes, blue eyes" anti-racism training in an Iowa school for 3rd graders

Adding to her mystique is that Elliott doesn’t mince words or put much effort into suppressing her opinions — especially when it comes to the current presidential administration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is, in her words, merely “a loyal acolyte” of the president who “voices the same lies and deceptions that Trump does.”

His track record of doing so, she insisted, makes him “hardly the best person to deal with criminal justice.” As for the Donald, she’s got even fewer nice things to say, asserting that the “reckless and bigoted remarks” he and his supporters have made have forced America to take “drastic steps backward after only seven months” into his term.

“People who are racist aren't stupid, they're ignorant. And the answer to ignorance is education.”

Her perspective is not surprising considering that for nearly a half-century she has reigned as one of the most outspoken social commentators and well-known race scholars on the planet. Somehow she manages to speak as passionately and candidly about America’s deep-seeded racial problems today as she did 49 years ago when her unconventional and controversial racism “exercise” catapulted her into the national spotlight.

“I created a microcosm of society in my third-grade classroom on April 5, 1968,” she said, speaking of the iconic day, the day after the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, when she was inspired to create what would become known as her famed “Blue-Eyes/Brown-Eyes Exercise.” Her life’s work landed her on "Oprah" five times, inspired more than a handful of documentaries and has been credited as the impetus for the “diversity training” that many corporations and educational institutions still host for their employees today.

Elliott’s reflections on America’s racial discord is reminiscent of that of President Barack Obama’s during his January farewell address to the nation. He asserted that “race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society” and that the “vision” of a “post-racial America” that emerged after he was elected the nation’s first black president eight years before was well intended, but sorely unrealistic.

“Racism is only, as we practice it, about 500 years old,” said Elliott. “We could destroy it, if we chose to. But that would take education."

She added: "People who are racist aren't stupid, they're ignorant. And the answer to ignorance is education.”

Elliott did just that, on that chilly April morning, as a third-grade teacher in tiny, nearly all-white Riceville, Iowa. Her students had wanted to know why “that King” guy had been killed and why black people — called Negroes at the time — were so upset about it.

Inspired by the Sioux Indian prayer, "Oh Great Spirit, keep me from ever judging a man until I have walked a mile in his moccasins," she decided it was time to teach them a very literal lesson about what it feels like to be discriminated against based on a physical attribute that they cannot change.

Her class was all white, so instead of skin color she divided the students by eye color for two separate school days. First, the brown-eyed students were given special privileges and told they were smarter, nicer, neater and better than those with blue eyes.

She said it didn’t take long for them to buy into their perceived superiority in her simulated society. “I watched my students become what I told them they were; I watched little wonderful brown-eyed white people become vicious, ugly, nasty, discriminating, domineering people in the space of 15 minutes,” she said. “I watched brilliant little blue-eyed white Christian children become timid and frightened, and angry and unable to learn.”

On the second day of the exercise, the roles were reversed and Elliott saw a similar effect when the blue-eyed students were treated better, but she also noticed that many of them seemed slightly more empathetic toward the brown-eyed kids after having been targets of discrimination — evidence, she said, that the scars of racism run deep.

“If you [discriminate against] a whole group of people for a lifetime, you change them psychologically,” she said. “You convince those who are analogous to the brown-eyed people that they are superior, that they are perfect, that they have the right to rule. And you convince those who take the place of the blue-eyed students that they are less than. If you do that for a lifetime, what do you suppose that does to them?”

“…It's time to insist that educators recognize the myth, teach about the myth, but teach the truth, that there's only one race: it's the human race.”

Ultimately, her bold exercise divided her town and her own children were harassed so much by classmates and teachers that her family had to relocate to a nearby town. She was thrust into the national spotlight and within a few weeks, she was on an airplane (for the first time, actually) flying to NBC studios in New York City for her first national interview; "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. Upon her arrival, she said the producer insisted that she keep the interview upbeat.

“I said, ‘Why?’ and he said, ‘Because our people don't want to be depressed,’” recalled Elliott. “I said: ‘Well, why am I here then? I can't think of anything that isn't depressing about racism.’ And he said, ‘Don't worry, we're going to ‘punch it up.’ I said: ‘Well, I'll stay then. I've never seen racism punched up.’"

In the nearly five decades since, she has traveled the world from Canada and Scotland to Berlin and Australia and across the United States speaking and sometimes conducting a variation of her Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes Exercise with adults and young adults at schools, universities, government agencies and corporations. The reaction from adults is usually stronger and more dramatic than the ones from her students who participated first. Her experiences are detailed in her book, "A Collar in My Pocket: The Blue Eyes Brown Eyes Exercise." She said her overall objective is to educate others — especially white people — about the harmful effects of racism.

Elliott said the racial clashes that erupted during the most recent presidential elections spoke volumes about the depth of America’s racial divide.

“It exposed the indecent racism that we have perpetuated in this country out of our total ignorance,” she said. “And people who say, ‘We aren't all racists.’ If you graduated from high school in the United States of America and you didn't learn how to be a racist you need to take the whole program over again, because that's what the program is: how to be a good American.”

“This is the most Hitlerian administration I've ever seen,” she said. “This man is talking about racial cleansing.”

Trump’s presidency, she said, has only exacerbated an already chronic problem.

“This is the most Hitlerian administration I've ever seen,” she said. “This man is talking about racial cleansing. People aren't upset about that; they're upset about social security and ‘Obamacare.’ They need to be upset about racial cleansing. They need to realize that one of the thing, one of the driving forces in this election was the knowledge people have that within 30 years white people will have lost their numerical majority in the United States of America.”

Elliott said the concept of race — particularly that one group of humans is superior over another based on skin color — is a myth that must be destroyed.

“We have been myth-led for 500 years in this country. It's time to recognize the myth, it's time to insist that educators recognize the myth, teach about the myth, but teach the truth, that there's only one race: It's the human race.”

Jane Elliott Justin Pye

Elliott says the Black Lives Matter movement is “the most important thing to have happened on this continent since Martin Luther King Jr.” And addressing heightened tensions between law enforcement and members of black, brown and economically disadvantaged communities, she said, begins with education.

“We have to re-educate law enforcement people; they've been trained in the same way that all the rest of us have,” she said. “We have to educate law enforcement people to the idea that we're all members of the same race. We have to start seeing [all] people as our relatives. You are a member of my family; I will not allow you to be abused because of somebody else's ignorance about the color of your skin.”

Related: ‘I Set Out to Prove Everyone Wrong’: Paralyzed Football Star Moves Forward

Look no further than the controversy that has swirled around former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick since his silent pre-game protest during the national anthem, as an example. “He did the right thing; now, he must suffer the consequences for being right,” she said, referring to his recent challenges find employment in the NFL.

Elliott is dogged in her view, but hopeful about change: “Nobody's born a bigot, you have to learn bigotry. Bigotry is a learned response; racism is a learned response. Anything you can learn, you can unlearn.”

Still she wonders aloud if any substantive change will happen in her lifetime.

“When is this racism — when is this situation going to end for people of color in this country,” she asked, frustration heavy in her voice. “And when is anti-Semitism going to end for people who are of the Jewish faith in this country? And when is hatred of Muslims going to end for people who are Muslim in this country? They don't know. I don't know. … I don't wanna go to my grave knowing that we didn't make a difference.”

Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/educator-jane-elliott-talks-trump-kapernick-fixing-racism-n747291?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_blk

Alabama Teen Shot After Police Mistake Saxophone for Machine Gun

This seems to be all-too familiar, this week after Gary Alabama police officer member of The Grand Dragon of the local chapter of the Klu Klux Klan mistook a black teenager’s saxophone for a machine gun while he walked to his bus stop this morning.




The officer, identified as Officer Sam Gatling says the teen was holding the Saxophone in a manner that a person would hold an assault rifle and was asked repeatedly to put it down and refused to comply. He spoke with the press yesterday to address the allegations that the incident was fueled by racism. Gatling stated, he should have been dribbling a basketball.

Minister Farrakhan The Announcement, October 24, 1989

This is the full press conference held by The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan. It addresses his more than a vision experience in Tepoztlán , Mexico, back on or about September 17, 1985, wherein he was taken to The Motherplane, the most advanced of the so-called UFO's. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was taught by Master Fard Muhammad regarding The Motherplane, which took flight in 1929-the same year of the mysterious crash of the New York Stock Exchange. The Motherplane is a 1/2 mile in length, by 1/2 mile in width.(we were not given the dimensions of its height,but suffice it to say it is a "City in The Sky", the Throne of Allah referred to in The Holy Qur'an and The New Jerusalem scene descending from the sky which is referred to in Revelations of The Bible)

Buildings shaking violently during the #earthquake https://t.co/2HvlyFrn2x pic.twitter.com/zzYRWsGkVP #sismo #quake #Mexico #MexicoCity

— RT (@RT_com) September 19, 2017

Sliding NFL ratings could throw networks for a loss

In a fractured media environment where award-winning scripted dramas comp

ete for the public's attention along with goofy cat videos, one of the few things that multibillion dollar media and entertainment conglomerates could count on to attract millions of viewers -- and generate the ad revenue that keeps them in business -- was the National Football League.

These days, however, the most popular U.S. professional sport isn't such a sure bet. According to Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser, viewership for the NFL was down 14 percent on a year-over-year basis during the first week of the 2017-18 season. That's the lowest level of same-week viewing since 2009. 

As a result, Walt Disney (DIS), parent of ESPN; CBS (CBS), parent of CBS MoneyWatch, Fox (FOXA), parent 21st Century Fox and Comcast (CMCSA), whose properties include NBC, are in a bind. They've counted on the NFL to buttress their business as audiences for cable and broadcast networks have dwindled in recent years. It has been an expensive strategy.

Fox, CBS and Comcast signed a $27 billion deal with the NFL for the right to broadcast games through 2022. ESPN reportedly pays $1.9 billion per year for the rights to "Monday Night Football," a 73 percent increase over the previous contract. NBC and CBS signed a $900 million deal in 2016 for the rights to broadcast Thursday night games.  

"The bigger question is why and how have sports defied gravity for so long," Pivotal's Weiser said, adding that broadcasting the NFL had "high fixed costs." He noted: "At the end of the day, people are using their TV sets less than they used to."

Theories abound attempting to explain the ratings drop. Among them: the public's attention being diverted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Before that, the nastiest presidential campaign in recent memory fixated viewers away from the gridiron. 

Others have pointed to the controversy around former San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a fan turn-off. Injuries to stars such as wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. of the New York Giants haven't helped, either, nor do the retirements of fan favorites such as Peyton Manning.

Some sports fans have argued that the quality of the league's product has slipped. Some evidence justifies these concerns. According to 538.com, only three games in the season's Week One were decided by 7 or fewer points, the lowest number for an opening week since 1973. Teams combined for 40.4 points per game, the sixth-lowest mark since 2012. Many of the games weren't even close, with the average margin of victory at 3-to-1.

To be sure, the viewership picture isn't entirely bleak. The opening contest on NBC's "Sunday Night Football" featured two of the league's most popular teams, the Dallas Cowboys and the New York Giants. It posted a 5 percent viewership gain over the previous year.

CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves, for one, isn't worried about the drop-off in NFL TV audiences, which he attributed to the hurricanes. He told CNBC recently, "I think the NFL is still the best property on television."

Moonves' optimism is shared by Amazon (AMZN), which bought the rights to stream 10 NFL games this season. Once the league's broadcast deal expires, Weiser expects the e-commerce giant to bid along with other tech stalwarts such as Apple (AAPL) and Google parent Alphabet (GOOG). That might make an expensive business even more pricey for the media companies.

Link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sliding-nfl-ratings-could-throw-networks-for-a-loss/

‘The whole damn system is guilty as hell’: St. Louis takes to the streets in wake of Stockley verdict

"No justice! No peace! No racist police!” 

FILE PHOTO: Jason Stockley, an ex-St.Louis police officer pictured in this police handout photo obtained by Reuters August 10, 2017. Harris County Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

This was the most dominant chant at the protests responding to the not-guilty verdict for former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley, which began on Friday, September 15 outside of St. Louis City Hall. Another frequent refrain was “the whole damn system is guilty as hell.”

Protestors reacted with anger and sadness to St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson’s acquittal of Stockley, who was charged with first degree murder in the 2011 shooting of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith. Many called for an economic boycott in response to the verdict.

“This was an open and shut case to me,” protestor Gwendolyn Cogshell said. “It was like Rodney King. Everybody saw what happened on TV and heard was what said.”

On a dashcam video, Stockley is heard saying to his patrol partner that he was going to kill Smith, who was fleeing police, and then 45 seconds later, after Stockley told his rookie partner to stop Smith’s car by crashing into it, Stockley shot Smith five times and killed him.

Cogshell said that the verdict was symptomatic of both patterns of racial injustice through the country, and a failure of the government and justice system in St. Louis specifically to treat black citizens as equal. She said the right way to fight back was with boycotts.

“Stop spending money,” Cogshell said. “Get groups and clergy to tell people not to come to St. Louis. We’re not going to be respected. It’s like taxation without representation.” 

Several streets around the area of Market and Turner streets in downtown St. Louis were blocked by protestors and police vehicles. Other streets, many businesses and some schools in the area voluntarily shut down. A temporary flight restriction was also issued over the protest.

The group at one point attempted to enter an interstate ramp, but was blocked by police. The protest then marched to St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD) headquarters and then back to City Hall, where they were met with police officers in riot gear.

At least one protestor has been arrested; the SLMPD announced that a male suspect was taken into custody at Washington Avenue and 14th Street after allegedly damaging a police vehicle. He was charged with Destruction of Property and Failure to Obey.

The protestor was riding a bicycle and did not appear to be resisting arrest.

“He tried to slow down the police car, and it almost hit him,” an ACLU legal observer present at the protest said.

Another protestor passed out face masks and bandages to those in the crowd.

Many St. Louis and Missouri-based advocacy groups have issued statements condemning the verdict, including ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit legal firm that represents victims of police violence.

“This devastating verdict reinforces the message that law enforcement can use fatal, excessive force against communities of color and turn to the courts for protection,” the statement read in part. “The egregious facts of this case underscore the failures of the criminal legal system even in clear-cut cases of police violence.”

There were scenes of conflict at the morning protest. At Market Street, one white protester took the megaphone to urge those gathered to work for police reform and transparency, telling them, “You must not give up. You must keep going, regardless of failures.”

Several black protestors objected. One said, “Don’t tell us not to be mad.”

Protestor Eddie Littleton, who said he has been involved in activism in St. Louis since the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, hoped the St. Louis community would come together to speak out against the verdict.

“I’m basically out to let the people know to come out, to vote, and let’s face the system,” Littleton said. “It’s not right. Let’s let it be known by all.”

Littleton was also supportive of using economic means to get the protestors’ point across, saying he hoped the money lost by businesses and events over the weekend would make an impact.

“Let’s let this system feel what we feel. It hurts us, we want to hurt them. We want to keep it peaceful, though. I’m not for violence. We want to hurt it where it hurts the most – in their pockets.” 

Link: http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/the-whole-damn-system-is-guilty-as-hell-st-louis/article_fb3bf0ce-9a49-11e7-9d08-0b3d8143fce2.html

Flight Attendant sheds new light on 9/11.

This video is based on combined segments from an interview conducted by George Noory on Coast to Coast AM with 9/11 researcher author and now retired Flight Attendant Rebekah Roth. This version of the interview is shortened and edited.

Michigan teacher ‘violently snatches’ black 6th-grader out of chair when he refuses to stand for pledge

A Michigan teacher has been put on leave after being accused of “violently snatching” a black student from his seat because he refused to stand for the pledge of allegiance.

According to WDIV, 6th grader Stone Chaney was sitting in his homeroom class at East Middle School in Farmington Hills, in his first week at the school when he was grabbed from behind by the teacher.

“The teacher consultant comes up behind me and snatches me out of my chair violently,” Stone explained to WDIV while demonstrating on his father how he was hoisted out of his chair. “I was so confused. I didn’t know what was going on.”

According to the 12-year-old, he was sitting during the pledge as he has done without incident since he was in the second grade.

“I don’t stand because I don’t pledge to a flag. I pledge to God and family,” the student explained, adding that the following day, another teacher yelled at him for the same offense.

The student’s father, Brian Chaney, said that the decision to not stand comes from his son and that he supports, stating,”It’s his choice to sit I don’t make him sit. And they should respect that,” and that they are think of moving out of ts school.

According to the school, they are investigating the incident while the teacher is out on suspension.

“The District fully supports the right of each student to participate or not in the daily Pledge. The teacher allegedly involved in the incident has been placed on administrative leave. At this time, the District cannot speculate about the outcome of the pending investigation,” reads a statement from the superintendent of Farmington Public Schools

Link: http://www.rawstory.com/2017/09/michigan-teacher-violently-snatches-black-6th-grader-out-of-chair-when-he-refuses-to-stand-for-pledge/#.Wbu9byy_71E.facebook

Columbus Cop Suspended For Making Comments About The Violent Arrest Of Timothy Davis! "Why Didn’t We Just Choke The F**king Life Out Of Him?"

Sound starts at .41secs

A Columbus, Ohio police officer was relieved of duty after body camera video emerged where he is heard commenting about the violent arrest of Timothy Davis in Columbus on September 1. 1:43 - “What did we tase him for? Why didn’t we just choke the fucking life out of him?” 13:38 - “There’s no, okay I’m going to arm bar you to the ground. No, I’m going to for real arm bar you and then when that still doesn’t work I’m going to choke the life out of you and then while you’re drooling on yourself I’ll handcuff you.” The officer was not one of the officers seen in a viral video punching and kicking Davis during an arrest on Livingston Avenue. In a statement, the police department said: "The Columbus Division of Police has removed a police officer from his patrol assignment for inappropriate and unprofessional comments following an arrest on September 1, 2017. The comments were heard after a review of body camera footage stemming from the arrest of Timothy Davis. It does not appear the officer depicted in the footage was involved in the arrest of Davis." "I am appalled by the statements made by this officer. They are not consistent with the training of our officers. Accountability and transparency are vital to our entire community and ever member of the Division. We have taken the officers badge and weapon pending further investigation," said Chief Kimberley Jacobs. The comments depicted in the body camera footage will be investigated by the Internal Affairs Bureau. The arrest of Davis is also being investigated by Internal Affairs separately. Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther released a statement Wednesday afternoon: I have reviewed the body-worn camera video, and I am incredibly bothered by the words of the officer in question. I strongly support Chief Jacob’s decision to remove the officer from duty. This is unacceptable behavior for Columbus police officers – or any city employee – and cannot be tolerated. It goes against our community’s values. I appreciate Chief Jacob’s transparency, and her and swift action in this matter. Columbus City Council members released a: Today, the above-named Columbus City Councilmembers viewed body camera footage that contained statements made by a Columbus Division of Police officer following the September 1, 2017, apprehension of Timothy Davis. We not only find these statements unacceptable and disturbing, but they are also in direct conflict with our community’s values and the policies, training, regulations and core values of the Columbus Division of Police. The Councilmembers support Chief Kim Jacobs’ swift action to take the officer’s badge and gun and immediately relieve him from duty. We also expect a complete and thorough investigation of the entire incident.

Want to understand white privilege? Look at college golf teams like mine

It's time we talked about how colleges let affluent white students be supported by African-American student labor

COLLEGE SPORTS, EDITOR'S PICKS, ENTERTAINMENT, GOLF, HIGHER EDUCATION, INEQUALITY, LIFE STORIES,LPGA, NCAA, RACE, SPORTS, UNIVERSITY, LIFE NEWS, ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

More and more discussion has become centered around what white privilege is. But very little dialogue has taken place around white privilege in college sports and the labor of African-American athletes on the football and basketball teams who make it possible for other sports to exist at universities.

So, as college football season begins in a couple weeks, I reflected back on my time at the University of Washington while playing on the women’s golf team.

For a good 20 years of my life, I was a competitive golfer. I played on a full athletic scholarship and eventually turned pro, playing a short while on the LPGA and developmental tours.

While it is no secret golf is made up of a majority of white men, I never fully recognized the privilege I had to play on a golf scholarship, and this realization came to me after reading a Facebook post from another white woman who I used to play on tour with: “If college is free for everyone, then it will be equivalent to a high school degree,” she lamented.

My first reaction was, “But you went to school for free on an athletic scholarship . . . also, your parents are millionaires.”

Then I wondered, “How do golf programs exist at universities?”

In 2011, when Washington’s football program went 0-11 for the season, the football program made a profit of close to $15 million. The basketball program, which did very well that year, pocketed around $6 million.

As one can imagine, when a basketball or football team wins a Bowl game or makes it into the Final Four, the financial stakes are considerably higher — not just for the schools, but for the NCAA itself.

So it should surprise no one that during March Madness in 2016, the NCAA raked inclose to $1 billion in three weeks from ad revenue, ticket sales, corporate sponsorships and media rights.

While it is no secret that the basketball and football programs at universities can make a ton of money for schools, there are also plenty of athletic programs that cost the universities and colleges money. Golf happens to be one of those programs.

First, I went back and tallied what my scholarship was worth. As an out-of-state student, my tuition was about $35,000 a year, my monthly stipend was $1,100 for nine months of year, plus about $1,000 in books for the year, totaling $183,000 for the four years.

This was just the cost of me as a student, not as an athlete.

I called my coach, Mary Mulflur, and asked, “How much did I cost the university to play on the team per year?”

She laughed and said, “Around $60K.”

The cost of playing on the women’s golf team included my equipment, travel to tournaments, physical therapy and insurance on me. In total, my time at the university cost the school around $424,000.

When I asked how the school could afford to have a golf program, without hesitation she responded, “Well, the football and basketball program, of course.”

Knowing this I quickly realized that in essence I was the freeloader that America loathes, the one we hear about so often in elections, one of those who takes advantage of a system set up to make people feel entitled.

In particular, other university sports like tennis, golf, swimming and gymnastics (mostly made up of white athletes) ride off the backs of mostly African-American athletes. According to a study conducted by University of Pennsylvania researcher Shaun R. Harper, black men only make up 2.5 percent of undergraduate students, but comprise 56 percent of college football teams and 61 percent of college basketball teams.

While it’s not completely fair to paint all golfers with a broad stroke, I would be remiss to say that in the confines of our perfectly manicured golf courses it becomes easy to forget that 43 million Americans live in poverty and it becomes easier to turn a blind eye to our privilege.

Many people are surprised to learn that several LPGA players support Donald Trump. And why do they support him? Because he has supported the LPGA throughout the years. Their support for him was rooted in the fact that he couldn’t possibly be that bad of a guy if he supported the LPGA tour (never mind the fact that he benefitted from from supporting the tour). It is also a blind spot on their part to think that Trump’s support of the LPGA equates to support of women, as we can see with programs he has overturned or dismantled so far.

LPGA professional Natalie Gulbis gave a glowing speech about Trump at the Republican National Convention, stating, “I believe this is the greatest time to be a woman in the greatest country in the history of the world, but I have no delusions that there isn’t a mess to clean up. And we desperately need someone to clean up that mess. That person is Donald Trump.”

A few months later, Gulbis penned a piece for espnW about what it was like to support Donald Trump. The essay was written after he signed the executive order banning refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim majority countries.

“And while Donald’s aggressive stand on immigration has been controversial, the LPGA is a very international tour, and LPGA officials say there have been no visa issues so far,” she wrote.

Well, of course there haven’t been any issues, because there are no players on the tour from the banned countries.

Talk about a real disconnect.

Another issue that presents itself is that entitlement is embedded in golf.

A week did not go by on tour where we as players did not complain about something: the greens were too bumpy; the greens were too fast; the lunch provided by the course was terrible; the fairways were not in perfect condition; the course was too short; the course was too long. You name it, we complained about it.

As I have further separated myself from the world of golf, focusing on writing about the sport rather than playing, I have a better sense of awareness of the privilege afforded to me to play a sport that is inaccessible to most.

Growing up, I was often the only girl at the golf course when practicing, and to my memory, I only met two black junior golfers in my area, both of whom were from the same family. While this should have stood out to me, as an adolescent my mind hyper-focused on being the best golfer, not on societal issues.

(Since the LPGA tour’s beginning in 1950, it has had only eight African-American golfers join the tour. The PGA tour has only had seven African-Americans participate since its founding in 1929.)

Upon entering high school, though, I began to see more clearly the divide still engrained in the sport. My high school golf team was filled with girls who came from upper-middle class families. Of the 10 girls on the team, none were minorities, except me, although I did not fully identify as Mexican.

I have a vivid memory of one girl’s father who flew his private plane to pick her up from an event when she decided she didn’t want to be in Ardmore, Oklahoma. I roomed with her when she made that phone call to her father to pick her up, and the thought that came to mind was, “You’re sitting here crying about not liking this town, but we get to play golf! Like how cool is it that we get to skip school to play golf, paid for by our school?”

During this time my mother was cleaning houses as a way to support me and my sister. She started cleaning houses because of the flexibility it provided. After scrubbing toilets (and inevitably, the toilets that belonged to the family of one of my golf teammates), she would take me to the golf course and sit in the snack bar for upwards of five hours, watching me through the window as I chased my dreams.

While there were certainly families that also made sacrifices to give their child the opportunity to play golf competitively, they were very few and far between. I wore cheap clothes from Walmart, and my mother drove a beat up 10-year-old Toyota Corolla, which left me feeling like an outsider.

The sacrifices my mother made so I could earn an athletic scholarship have left me feeling eternally grateful. However, while I loved college golf, there is a sense of guilt that I have zero debt from college for playing a sport that in all honesty does little to nothing promote a university. A good golf program only matters to the golfer playing on the team, and it is only because of the labor of mostly African-American athletes that we are able to play.

As my political and societal views have begun to evolve over time, the privilege and past discriminatory practices embedded in golf have weighed heavily on me. In particular, I notice how it has shaped the views of my golfing companions who have lived in a world of privilege.

I don’t consider myself fully “woke,” as people say these days. Moments come and go where I surprise myself for thinking a particular thought, and I can’t help but wonder if my time spent in such an elite world contributed to my ignorance.

Perhaps my views were shaped by wanting to feel like I belonged, and belonging meant ignoring that the golf community, which is mostly still white and male, does little voluntarily to make the sport more inclusive and accessible.

One thing is clear though: Golf is a perfect example of the world we live in terms of the haves and have nots. But whether through golf or through something else, my hope is that one day everyone will have access to the same indulgence of happiness and opportunity.

Link: http://www.salon.com/2017/08/13/want-to-understand-white-privilege-look-at-college-golf-teams-like-mine/