Stokes no longer a Gator

So it's white "libbies" who are trying to end or seriously water down the teaching of the history of slavery and Jim Crow in public schools by inaccurately referring to the subject matter as CRT and trying to ban its teaching.

 

Who is trying to erase Civil Rights and other racially sensitive topics from schools? Answer: racist white conservatives. If you don't have a problem with that, then you're either ignorant or a sick dude.

 

They sure did. It's all fun and games when it was time for them to destroy the career of a football player who they felt should've been shutting up, or a comedian who goes after Trump. But they want to throw a temper tantrum and scream about cancel culture when it affects others. Biggest hypocrites you'll ever find.

 

No one is trying to remove that part of our history. It’s all being taught in every school.
But there is no reason to get into the awful details with our children. Newsflash to our libbies: our racist past is no secret.
If you are infatuated by that part of our history, go to the nearest community college and enroll in a history course that emphasizes it.
Have at it.

 

Kaepernick did lead a team to the Super Bowl and while he probably wasn't good enough to be a starting quarterback he was at least as good as a number of backup quarterbacks currently on NFL rosters. The real indication that he was "cancelled" was the fact that he wasn't even given a shot to make an NFL roster as a free agent after the Orange One attacked him. I could be mistaken but at least Kaepernick could have been invited to training camp and then cut if he wasn't good enough. He wasn't even given that opportunity.

 

Last time I checked, libbies were tearing down statues of civil war southern leaders.
What in the holy hell are you talking about? One side is trying their best to create a certain narrative and it’s not helping bring us together.

 

The word is 100% derogatory historically. It should never be uttered by a white person. Having said that, punishment should fit the offense. Kicking an 18-19 year old off the team seems disproportionate. However, there may be other conduct of a similar nature we don’t know about, and this incident may have been the last straw.

 

Kaepernick had a 16:4 TD/INT ratio his final season, which is more than good enough to be a backup. His fate in the NFL was sealed the moment Trump railed on him at his MAGA rally (to the squealing delight of all the MAGA fans in attendance) and warned NFL teams not to sign him, and all of the MAGA owners in the NFL didn't want to piss off dear leader. That's the true definition of cancel culture that these hypocrites don't want to address.

 

Even if you’re right about Kaepernick (which you are not because NFL teams have shown countless times they will hire anybody with an ounce of football ability their character be damned), two wrongs don’t make a right. I never claimed cancel culture doesn’t cut both ways either. And you’re fast out of steam if you’re having to play the Kaepernick card. There are black former Gators who know Stokes, defending him on Twitter. You don’t speak for them.

 

This is probably the most accurate thing you’ve written in this thread.

 

Yeah, because the side that still believes the 2020 election was rigged is definitely trying to bring us together LMAOOO

 

Look -- people "profiting millions from these lyrics" is one helluva reach and completely beside the point of this word and your point, your logic makes it seem as though the profiting happened purely because of the value of that word and not the art that houses it, a ludicrous association that I doubt you want to make.

To your other point and some of the other posters (for a supposed left-leaning board the first seven or eight posts in this thread tell a totally different story), the word itself is an absolute weapon. A weapon that was sewed into the very fabric of this country, designed to dehumanize an entire race of people and rob them of human rights. It should be lost on NO ONE that there are players on this team who's grandparents were literally denied opportunities in the great state of Florida, let alone the US of A, by people who embraced the horrific power of that word (and to be clear, the people who created and weaponized this word were EXCLUSIVELY white).

You can't untie the use of the word in hip hop, primarily by black artists and by extension, within black communities, from the history of this word I outlined above, taking possession of a WEAPON and robbing it of its power by contextualizing it as a familial term. Some of you in this thread are doing exactly that, CONVENIENTLY complaining about what, as another poster keeps framing himself and his brethren, "heterosexual white men" can't do with a willful ignorance to what "heterosexual white men" HAVE DONE with this very damn word. And when I think about the choice Billy had to make, a large part of it came down to weighing what Marcus POSTING this video (not amongst his circle of friends with whom he has an agreed upon rapport, but to social media) said about where the team falls on that spectrum, placing greater value on what Marcus "can or can't, should or shouldn't do" than on the harm that's been done by this word in the context emanating from the mouth of someone like Stokes. Because again, there are players on this team who go home and look at elders who were once literally denied access to life changing opportunities exclusively by WHITE PEOPLE wielding this word. It’s not JUST about Stokes. He should have known better (you bet your ass he does NOW).

I'm trying to think of the right analogy here. I'm a black man. This word is the knife "heterosexual white men" have used since this country's inception to both maim and mark me; in some cases the marking was more important than the maiming because it closed future doors before I could even think to look at them, anyone who embraced that word would certainly not embrace ME. I then took the knife and rather than knife you back, reclaimed it as a tool to both shape and describe the culture YOU used the word to denigrate. In the wake of that, all I ask is that you not retake the possession of the knife. Because in YOUR hands it is a WEAPON (this is historical fact, not opinion).

The fact that I neutralized the weapon does NOT give you the right to repossess it. It doesn't give you the right to use it as I use it.

Stokes (and in his defense, some of his generation) don't understand this. But there are players in that locker room who's grandparents were denigrated by that word. Hell, I'm 43 and a leader in my field and I WAS RECENTLY denigrated by this word by a "heterosexual white male" subordinate.

Some of this is debatable and some of if isn't. The word has a history that is fact. The weaponizers of this word? Fact. Some in the thread have argued that we should look to the future and not the past, those terrible “white libbies won’t allow us to be great again because they keep drudging up the past…” but then a white hired driver called ME an n-word the other damn day. The past my ass.

Now, back to debates: that Billy should have or should not have revoked this kid's scholarship? Debatable, which is why we’re all here debating it. But that revoking his schollie is a crime and a completely unacceptable example of cancel culture rum amok? THAT take is laughable when you consider the full spectrum of this word and the culture Billy is responsible for representing.

Postscript: I normally capitalize black and not white. I have my own reasoning for this but didn’t here because clearly some posters take offense. See how easy that was? And capitalizing black or not capitalizing white never roused mobs to have folks swinging by their necks.

 

This is helpful. Huge pivot bro. Way off topic.
But hopefully you feel better repeating what CNN is feeding you.

 

Here are the facts.
1. Kapernick was cut because he wasn't good enough.
2. Hip Hop culture has embraced the "N" word by changing the last letters as a way to take away it's power. That was their choice and whenever a 17 year old white kid that has grown up with the Hip Hop culture hears the word it does not have a racist connotation to him.
3. Stokes has played football most of his life and has had Black teammates his entire life. If he was a racist we would have heard about it by now. At worst he made a mistake but it does not appear to be a racist tirade.
4. If Stokes was the best high school QB in the country he would never have been dismissed over this.
5. I have used the example of Eminem using the word and getting a pass by the hip hop community because they knew what was in his heart and he was just a kid when he used it in a song. Well Stokes is just a kid who has probably sung songs like this for years with his Black friends. I don't see any of his teammates coming out now and saying what a racist he is and he has been exposed.
6. I have no problem with the kid being dismissed from the recruiting class but let's just call it for what it is. He isn't as good as the guy they got and it has nothing to do with skin color. The Gators should not fuel a racism theory by saying anything other than we need the scholly back since we got the other guy.

 

Nah I'm definitely right. Trump enacted cancel culture on Kaepernick. He went on national TV and publicly told teams to fire those kneeling for the national anthem and you all squealed in delight and applauded in approval. You supported cancel culture then, so don't get on here and start crying about it now.

And why do yall keep bringing black players and black people and the black community into this?
"But but black people say it in their music, it's their fault."
"Why doesn't the black community stop using the n word?"
"But but his black teammates are defending him."

Time to stop deflecting to black people and hold white people accountable for their own actions.

 

Guy who does nothing but post irrelevant gifs all day now crying about being "off topic" lmao

 

Incorrect! At the time Kaepernick was booted he was on par with the bottom third of the starting QB’s in the league. His completion % struggled to get to 60% which isn’t good but he was certainly a capable backup.

 

Again, two wrongs don’t make a right. Making the argument that Kaepernick was mistreated, so it’s okay to mistreat a 17 year old Gator commit. Last I checked, Kaepernick was still holding workouts after Trump left office and nobody wanted his scrub of a QB ass. You must be very unhappy if your take is “Kaepernick was cancelled, so it’s okay to cancel Stokes.”

 

“on par with the bottom third of the league”. And Kaepernick would have just roasted any team who made him a backup. That would have been turned around on the NFL as well. Bottom line, if you have NFL talent, some desperate team out there will take you regardless of your past. See DeShaun Watson, Tyreke Hill and Antonio Brown.