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Editorials/Columns
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Jameis Winston: The Face Of The Bucs
y now every football fan
and every follower of the news know who Jameis Win- ston is. For those who don’t know who he is, he is and was the super Black quarterback of the Florida State Seminoles. He is the All-American, Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback as a freshman. He also was the winner of 28 straight games while playing at FSU.
All these all-pro honors came in just two years of foot- ball at Florida State. Now after two years of college football, he is being considered as a number one draft pick and the face of a pro football team.
It is fact that Winston is a pro quarterback. He is used to playing from the pro set and he
is very good at it. There is no question about his ability on the field, but there are a lot of con- cerns about his off-field con- duct.
His accuser says the offense against Winston is serious enough to keep him from the face of any football franchise. I say, not so.
The most serious charge against him was rape. He has been cleared of rape by every agency that investigated the case. A lot of the other incidents were non-felony incidents.
Bucs fans should have the most concerns over whether Winston can be the face of a franchise. The Bucs have the first pick in this year’s draft and they need a good quarterback.
Jameis Winston is a damn good quarterback, and he is what the Bucs need.
The Bucs have been study- ing him and he can be the Pey- ton Manning, Tom Brady or the Russell Wilson of the Bucs.
The Bucs have needed a quarterback for at least a decade. Winston is the kind of quarterback a team can build a top notch offense around.
Go back to the days when you were in school, if you will. Think about the foolish things you did. We attribute these little slip ups to being young and fool- ish. Why can’t Jameis Win- ston have his young and foolish moments?
Bucs fans don’t give a hoot about what accusers say, and I don’t either. What we do know is that we want the Buccaneers to win ball games.
It looks like the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are not taken in by the Jameis Winston can’t be the face of the franchise non- sense. Let’s give the young man a chance before we toss him to the devil.
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The Prophecy Addresses His Children
ELMA, THE EDMUND PETTIS BRIDGE: On the 50th an-
niversary of one of the most brutal demonstrations of race-initiated police violence, citizens from around the world met and marched across the infamous Edmund Pettis Bridge. Among them was a father and mother, their two daughters, and the daughters’ grandmother.
Perhaps, they would have blended into the throng- turned-river of walking, singing participants. But the family who held hands with others as they solemnly-yet-excitedly walked across the bridge was America’s First Family Presi- dent Barack Obama, his wife, Michelle, their daughters, Malia and Sasha, and their grandmother, (Michelle’s mother), Marian Robinson. Nothing in the history of Amer- ican social events could have been more inspirational than when that family set foot upon a bridge built upon the belief that such a family would never draw breath in America’s fu- ture.
But, history was a liar.
Indeed, when he was a younger man, activist John Lewis had made that walk. Fellow activist Amelia Boynton Robin- son left both footprints and blood smears on the concrete street that comprised a bridge.
But now, a Black President and his family would squeeze palms and sing songs to commemorate an event as momen- tous as the cessation of the Civil War, as earth-shaking as the March on Washington, and as compelling as the signing of the Civil Rights Act. No, the United States of America is still a boiling, raging river of broken dreams, missed oppor- tunities, and unnecessary insults.
But, as a father said about his children, “Part of what I want Malia and Sasha to understand is that this is an unfin- ished project.”
Bigots In Higher Learning
have learned in this life that there are three things that every Black person who lives in this country has to expect to ex- perience. The first two, of course, are death and taxes. But, the third is something our skin tone alone won't allow us to es-
cape... the specter of racism. Bigotry and prejudice are as American as apple pie and base- ball. They are so entwined into the fabric of this nation that rip- ping them out is impossible without completely destroying everything they're constructed
around.
Martin Luther King Jr.
once said he had a dream that “one day little Black boys and girls would sit at the table of brotherhood with little white boys and girls.” But how can that ever become a reality when white children never appear to stop learning how to hate? It seems each generation of whites teach the next the same destruc- tive lessons that have been passed on for ages.
Some may read this and view what I'm saying as nothing more than the ranting of a bitter pessimist. And, to a certain ex- tent, that may be true. But it's hard to see things differently when, every time I look up, I wit- ness another example of young white people infected with the poison of racist ideology.
This time it came in the form of a video showing members of a popular college fraternity at
Oklahoma University, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, chanting these charming lyrics: “There will never be a n---er at SAE. There will never be a n---er at SAE. They can hang him from a tree. But he'll never sign by me. There will never be a n---er at SAE."
If this were a video of a group of 60-year-old- white guys coming from their Masonic lodge, to me, it wouldn't be much of an issue. That is mainly because, knowing the kind of sands they crossed and the era in which they were raised, I wouldn't expect anything more.
But these weren't some old, white, weary, travelers from pre- civil rights America. These were kids, born in the 1990s, singing about hanging n---ers from trees in 2015. And therein lies the troubling part of this story.
The fact that these were 18 and 19-year-olds singing glee- fully about, what's in essence, the brutal murder of Black men, lets me know that the horrors from a not-so-distant past could re-emerge at any time due to the fact that the mentality responsi- ble for such atrocities still thrives.
When news of this occur- rence first broke and people like former Oklahoma and Dallas Cowboys head coach, Barry Switzer (who also happens to be an honorary member of the organization), started coming out and saying that the kids singing the offensive lyrics
weren't reflective of the culture of SAE, I laughed and thought to myself, "does he really think we're that stupid?"
According to news reports, these were neophytes to the fra- ternity. Freshly minted mem- bers, from different parts of the country, who were probably forced to learn a number of corny chants as part of their ini- tiation. I can't imagine that this wasn't one of them.
I mean, it's hard to believe that they made this song up on the whim, with the cadence and well-timed claps perfectly exe- cuted, while in route to an event celebrating the organization's founders. Someone had to teach them.
This means that the people grooming these young men to assume prominent roles in our society, the ones who are now willing to throw the fruit they cultivated under the bus, more than likely, condoned and even performed a similar version of the tune themselves at some point. A highly probable sce- nario that makes the condemna- tion coming from the elder representatives of this fraternity a blatant display of cowardice and hypocrisy.
Their actions, more than those of the kids on the video, exposed a level of character so low that I can't help but wonder, when they sing about not want- ing to associate with n---ers, if they're talking about Black peo- ple or the image they see staring back from the mirror?
Reality On Ice is © by the Florida Sentinel Bul- letin Publishing Company. Anyone wishing to contact Clarence Barr can email him at: Cbreality1@- yahoo.com.
A Repeat That Didn’t Have To Happen
od help him, but he did it again. After spending nearly
15 years behind bars for committing sex crimes against children, Michael W. Shepard, a “designated sexual predator,” was recently arrested for sexual battery against a five-year-old girl, an eight-year-old boy, and against two other boys, ages eight and ten. Barely 14 months after his re- lease from prison, Shepard repeated his obviously addictive behavior before being placed in police custody.
What happened to his rehabilitation? Could a child mo- lester actually be cured? Or should child molesters be for- ever restricted to adult only communities or colonies outside of humane civilization?
In 2014, Shepard lived two blocks from a family of a hus- band, wife, and their three young children. During that time, Shepard’s back yard faced the side of a school’s early child- hood center. The parents attempted to have him removed from their neighborhood. But seemingly, the argument of ethics was not on their side. They argued the horror of child molestation was based on an adult’s sexual interest in chil- dren and a more than likely a spate of repeat offenses until the criminal was apprehended and jailed for the remainder of his or her life. “Why then,” questioned parents, “do we keep releasing sexual predators who have had no psychoan- alytical therapy for their disorder?”
Instead of an answer, what returned was an echo.
So, Michael Shepherd and 2,818 other registered sex offenders live in Hillsborough and Pinellas Counties. Their numbers are growing. Either we enact “Civil Commitment Laws” in Florida, which keep predators off our streets, or we continue to allow them to rape and ruin the lives of innocent, helpless children.
By the way, at least 31 sexual predators may be within one mile of your front yard. Our chil- dren are in danger. Our society needs humanitarian answers.
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PAGE 6-A FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2015