Like Colin Kapernick, Bobby Green was raised by someone besides his natural parents. UNLIKE Colin Kaepernick, he’s grateful for the chance he was given.
Bobby Green has had a tough life. There’s no getting around it. But he has a much more positive message for America than many other professional athletes for some reason.
Three years ago Green lost his younger brother, Mitchell Davis, Jr., in a drive-by shooting in which five members of his family were struck by gunfire. Davis, 23, was the only one who did not survive the attack.
“All my life I’ve seen so many things happen to so many people in different ways; killings and abandonment,” Green said. “My mother left me on a porch when I was four years old with some random stranger. I know hurt and I know pain.”
The real test of a man is what you do with the hand life deals you.
Colin Kapernick took the easy way out, the coward’s way.
He embraced an attitude of victimhood and blame, and he leveraged that into some multi-million-dollar opportunities.
He is miserable and cynical despite living a life that many would have given their eye teeth to have access to, one that he really couldn’t have had in any country other than America. But that doesn’t stop him from finding reasons to hate it here… while happily cashing checks from an international conglomerate (Nike) that reportedly makes use of China’s slave labor market.
He has a particular animus for white people. Which must make things pretty awkward at family gatherings, since the man was adopted by white parents.
Bobby Green, on the other hand, understands the role of gratitude.
Nobody forced his adopted dad to take on someone who had bounced around in foster homes. But he did it anyway.
Now that he’s grown into a very capable and competitive man, Green has a very different message for America than the cynical ingrates like Colin Kaepernick:
This. This is every interracial family in America. Every friendship across color lines. Every employer who hired an employee who she respects even with opposite politics.
Stop telling us how much our parents & brothers and co-workers hate us.
It’s untrue:pic.twitter.com/qk7fCWetXN— Eric Weinstein (@EricRWeinstein) September 6, 2020
America does NOT suck. We all tend to see what we want to see.
Some are hellbent on seeing an America that sucks. That way, it gives them an excuse to burn it down and start over — metaphorically or even literally.
Sure, there are pockets of hell in parts of the country, that need fixing — no matter what color your skin is — but there is so much that is marvelous and wonderful, too.
And just because the news cycle tends to turn our attention to all the craptastic parts, it’s important to stop from time to time and remember … those moments do not define us as a nation.
Moments like this one right here, with Bobby Green’s grateful arm around his adopted dad, calling for this great nation to healing and reconciliation.
He echoed those words America so desperately needs to remember and embrace, ‘not the color of their skin but the content of their character’.
Not only in his speech — but in his actions.
