“There Has Been No Oppression in the Last 100 Years” – Former Nfl Player and Coach Mike Ditka

Former Chicago Bears star and NFL Coach Mike Ditka was interviewed for a radio show and criticized the NFL players right to silent protest. Ditka said,

“There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of. Now maybe I’m not watching it as carefully as other people.”

Mike Ditka was born in Carnegie, PA, in 1939, and before and after he was born, there were discriminatory practices in housing, hiring, education, transportation, the armed forces, public accommodations, and even professional sports.

For instance, before Ditka was born, in 1921, the Tulsa race riot occurred when a white mob started attacking residents and businesses in an African-American community, known as Black Wall Street. This riot is considered one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States.

In 1923, six African-Americans and two Caucasians died in a week of violence when a white woman in Rosewood, Florida claimed she was beaten and raped by a black man, but she lied, and nobody was ever arrested in the case.

After Ditka was born, in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus, which started the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a seminal event in the Civil Rights Movement, and a political and social protest campaign against the policy of racial segregation on the public transit system of Montgomery, Alabama.

Emmett Till was born in 1941, and he was a 14-year-old African-American who was lynched in Mississippi because he allegedly offended a white woman in a grocery store. Till was brutally murdered in 1955, and the Caucasian killers were acquitted, which drew attention to the long and violent history against African-Americans in the United States.

In 1955, Till went to visit his relatives in Mississippi, and he walked into a store and spoke to a 21-year-old white woman named Carolyn Bryant. Till was accused of flirting and whistling at Bryant, and due to the Jim Crow-era south, racial segregation was enforced to keep American-Americans and Caucasians separated.

Several nights after the incident, Bryant’s husband and his half-brother went to Till’s Great-Uncle’s house and abducted him. They took Till away, beat, and mutilated him, before shooting him in the head, and they sunk his body in the Tallahatchie River. Three days later, Till’s body was recovered.

Emmett Till

Till’s body was returned to his home town of Chicago, and his mother insisted on a public funeral service and an open casket, so the world could see the evil her son had to endure before his tragic death. Till’s Mother’s decision to have an open casket was not to only focus on racism in America, but the barbarism of lynching.

Tens of thousands of people attended Till’s funeral, viewed his open casket, and images of his mutilated body were published in black-oriented magazines and newspapers.

Before Carolyn Bryant’s death in 2017, she admitted she lied when she testified in 1955 against Emmett Till. Bryant repeatedly lied to the FBI for decades.

Emmett Till died in 1955 at 14-years-old, and in 1955, Mike Ditka was 16-years-old. For Ditka to say there has been no oppression in the last 100 years is ridiculous, because Emmett Till was only two years younger than him when he got lynched. In 2017, Mike Ditka turned 78-years-old, and if Emmett Till was still alive, he would be 76-years-old.

How this evil act of terrorism or other oppressive cases that happened in the United States never crossed Ditka’s mind before saying that there hasn’t been any oppression in the last 100 years is sad and insensitive. This is proof that if people aren’t affected by racism and discrimination personally. They don’t have anything to worry about because if they never experienced racism and discrimination, it doesn’t exist.

NFL Hall of Fame Quarterback Joe Namath suggested that Ditka should,

“Look up the meaning of oppression. Look up the definition of oppression, and you understand that it’s obviously taken place.”

NFL Former Wide Receiver Steve Smith Sr. took to Twitter to criticize Ditka and said,

“Really? Civil Rights Act of 1964, voting act of 1965, Rosa Parks 1955. To say this gives us a peek into you're heart. Jim crow laws, Brown v. Board of education Great coach..clueless person.”

According to a HuffPost analysis of data compiled by The Washington Post and The Guardian, police and law enforcement officials killed at least 223 black Americans in the year after Colin Kaepernick first began his silent protest in the NFL in 2016.

From 1917-2017, there have been hundreds of cases about people of color being oppressed in America, which contradicts a nation that stands for “Liberty and Justice for all.”

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.