KING Why the United States is not the best country in the world. The Fourth of July is a complicated holiday for African Americans. We love the food, family and even the fireworks, but the actual history and rationale behind the holiday have never sat well with us. Its why Frederick Douglass, on July 5, 1. Douglass declared,I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. Crack For Shaun White Clothing' title='Crack For Shaun White Clothing' />This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. 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The Los Angeles Times published a pretty tragic profile of LenDale White, catching up with everything thats happened to the former USC star running back since he. After being taken down twice by Blogger within a single week, we got the message Its Time To Go. Gates of Vienna has moved to a new address. A comedy trope where a person rattles off or displays an absurdly long list of things. For example, someone goes into a shop and asks for a sandwich. The. Poem of the Masses. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July. When Douglass gave this speech, the United States had been celebrating its so called freedom for 7. Now, 1. 65 years after Douglass delivered this speech, it rings as true today as it did then. This Fourth of July, I saw many of my closest friends, everyday people and celebrities alike, echoing Douglass either by quoting him directly or by sharing their own versions of the exact same sentiments. Perhaps none were as succinct and to the point as those from my friend Blake, who tweeted F k the 4th. F k the flag. F k the national anthem. KING Castile verdict painful result of laws rigged to guard cops. I see very little difference between what Blake said and what Douglass said. Mind you, neither said that they hate America but they both have serious problems with a nation willing to gleefully tout symbols of freedom while it denies full, unfettered access to those freedoms to so many that call this land home. Its why, in 1. 97. World War II veteran Jackie Robinson wrote in his autobiography, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot stand and salute the flag. Few people had seen America overpromise and under deliver as up close and personal as Robinson. My guess is that most of his white fans would have assumed that he wouldve looked back on his years as an American with a big, grateful toothy grin. He did not. This nation wears out even its brightest stars. Its why a young Cassius Clay would return to the United States from Rome in 1. Olympic Gold Medal into the Ohio River. Its why that same man changed his name to Muhammad Ali. Its why Muhammad Ali sacrificed his career and was banned from boxing for years when he refused to fight in the Vietnam War. Douglass, Robinson and Ali are all celebrated today as the best this nation has to offer, but they were the staunchest possible critics of the United States. Tuesday on Twitter, I shared Blakes tweet with the comment that what he said about the Fourth well represented how so many of friends feel about the holiday. The backlash was severe ranging from obscene bigotry to thousands of calls for he and I to find another country to live in. To be black in America, and criticize this country with confidence, seems to make one a traitor with conservative white America. To be white in America, and criticize this country with confidence, got Donald Trump elected President of the United States. His entire campaign was staked on the idea that America had tanked in every essential way and that he alone could make it great again. KING Were losing the battle against police brutality in America. The United States of America is not the best country in the world. I say that without emotion like I can tell you that the Brooklyn Nets are not the best team in the NBA. Saying as much doesnt mean I hate the Nets or hate Brooklyn or hate the NBA. The Brooklyn Nets may actually be the worst team in the NBA. They shouldve received the No. Theyll lose next years pick, too. The men they have on the team are great guys. Ive come to know several of them. Ive also come to know many employees there great people all of them. But the team is still in rough shape. To call the Brooklyn Nets the best team in the NBA tells me a lot about the person making the claim. First off, they clearly dont understand the metrics of greatness. Greatness can be measured in the NBA. The Nets didnt win the championship. The Nets didnt even make the playoffs. The Nets dont have any all stars. The Nets arent seen as a remotely decent destination for top free agents. The Nets dont have any league leaders in a single quantifiable category. Im not even sure a true fan of the Brooklyn Nets that is, someone who values and loves the team and wants whats best for them, would ever call them the best team in the NBA. If you truly love the Brooklyn Nets and want to see them grow and improve, calling them the best team in the NBA, is not just delusional, its dishonest. Teams cannot improve with honest assessments of where they are and how they got there. The United States of America is the Brooklyn Nets. We are not the best country in the world. This is not my opinion. These are the facts. What makes a country great is measurable. And in every demonstrable category, our country is coming up very, very short. If it is your opinion is that the United States is the greatest nation in the world, your definition of greatness is likely skewed by blind patriotism, greed or white supremacy. Either way, you are wrong, and claiming that the United States is the best nation on earth, when we are far from it, is a peculiar lie to hold on to a contradiction that exposes the hypocrisy of Trumps most devoted supporters perhaps more than any other claim. Is it not weird to claim that Obama took the country to hell in a handbasket while also claiming its the best country in the world You cant claim both and mean it. Choose one. KING 2 Supreme Court rulings must change to end police brutality. Here I will press my case with facts and evidence. Americas criminal justice nightmare. The United States has more black men either in prison or under the thumb of the criminal justice system than were enslaved in 1. This is ugly. The United States locks up more people at a higher rate than any country in the world. Its not even close. We are the incarceration nation. It is indeed true that we have just 5 of the worlds population but more than 2. Indeed, it appears that the United States not only incarcerates more of its citizens than any country in the world, but more of our people are locked behind bars than any country in the entire history of the world. What that means is that the United States incarcerates about 7. Of the 2. 22 nations with accurate data, more than half of them, lock up less than 1. When race is considered, the numbers skyrocket with African Americans being incarcerated an average of 5. Oklahoma and New Jersey. The United States imprisons a higher percentage of African Americans than South Africa did during apartheid. I could stop right there. For me, the country that sets records with the number of people it incarcerates cannot be the best country in the world. Period. These abominable facts preclude our nation from such a position, but the nightmare of our justice system does not end there. KING Most Americans dont know their DA or what they stand for. No country with a remotely respected record on human rights even maintains the death penalty. In fact, only a few dozen countries in the world executed people in recent years, including Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and, of course, the United States. These are our peer countries when it comes to the death penalty. Canada to the north and Mexico to the South have banned executions. The entire European Union banned executions and actually requires the ban of all of its member states. Len. Dale White Estimates Hes Suffered 2. Concussions. The Los Angeles Times published a pretty tragic profile of Len. Dale White, catching up with everything thats happened to the former USC star running back since he left college. Most of the details are dismal. Heres White, who played in 5. NFL games, talking about the physical pain caused by his career White estimates he sustained 2. But he cant be sure. Only one was diagnosed, he says. You lose consciousness and then all of a sudden its like shoooo ooooof, White says, making a slurping noise, his eyes growing wide as he described the sensation. Like, thats how it sounds, like shhhhhhloooof, and then all of a sudden you hear the play again. Hed wander around in a haze, Young directing him to the right spot until he regained his senses. His head throbbed. His body ached. When his career began to slide, he slipped into a funk. Pain pills, he found, dulled the misery. If youre wondering why the hell any football player still puts himself through this kind of awfulness and keeps playing, the article has a window into that, too. The mental pain was worse. Anita White Taylor, Len. Dales mother sat him down and talked about depression. Shed gone through bouts, too, she told him. Engineering Drawing Handbook Standards Australia Online on this page. She asked him to see someone. She saw a commercial about the brain injury chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, on television. She begged him to get checked out. She asked him Why dont you find something else to devote your life toHe told me, Mom, football is all I know, Taylor says. Thats all I know. White opens up about having suicidal thoughts since his career ended, though he says marijuana has helped him recover from his addiction to pain pills. Heres hoping he can find peace in life. Los Angeles Times.