On Friday, NFL linebacker Brandon Marshall received an anonymous letter at Denver Broncos HQ.
It started out with some brilliant sarcasm:
“How are you? You are a great football player Mr. Marshall, no you are not!”
Then things got really racist:
“You are a worthless fucking n*****… If you are so unhappy with America, turn in your “millions” and move back to the jungle, you fucking gorilla/monkey… your time is coming, watch out n*****!”
The messenger here is clearly upset by Marshall kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality. When Marshall joined the protest, he lost an endorsement deal with Air Academy Federal Credit Union.
He stopped kneeling halfway through the season, explaining in an Instagram post that although his public protest was coming to an end, he would continue to work with community leaders to support victims of police violence.
Marshall made the following statement about the letter:
“The hatred by some against people of color is one of the reasons we are where we’re at in the world today, and they wonder why we feel the way we do and take the stances that we take.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BNzjYATAJyh/
You can read the full text of the anonymous letter below:
It really is ridiculous how upset some conservatives get over people protesting The Star-Spangled Banner. I mean, c’mon, it’s just a song. And although no one sings it, our national anthem does include these lyrics:
“No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave “
Francis Scott Key wrote the anthem during the War of 1812. The British had invaded America at the time, and they offered slaves freedom in exchange for joining their forces and fighting against us.
So with this whole ‘no refuge could save the slave from the grave’ business, our national anthem celebrates the fact that we killed a bunch of people we enslaved because they joined another country’s army as a way to escape slavery.
Is this song really worth defending?
Featured Image: Screenshot Via Instagram.
