Leave it to Nike’s favorite athlete Colin Kaepernick to tweet this on hearing the news that Iranian General Qassam Soleimani had been killed by a US drone.
“There is nothing new about American terrorist attacks against Black and Brown people
for the expansion of American imperialism.”
When former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer criticized Kaepernick, my former CNN colleague April Ryan angrily leapt to Kaepernick’s defense.
Memo to Kaepernick and April Ryan? Remember David Hickman.
And what does Colin Kaepernick do? He sides with Soleimani. And April Ryan defends Kaepernick…
David Hickman was a 23-year-old U.S. Army Specialist who hailed from North Carolina. On November 14, 2011, Specialist Hickman, as noted “was killed when a roadside bomb exploded and tore through his armored truck, causing him internal brain hemorrhaging.”
Oh yes. There’s one other thing to note about David Hickman. He was black.
Another memo to Kaepermnick and Ryan: David Hickman was killed – by Qassam Solemani. Here is a CBS report on Solemani. It says, in part, this:
“As chief of the Quds — or Jerusalem — Force, Solemani oversaw the Guard’s foreign operations…U.S. forces would blame the Quds Force… for training and supplying the bomb makers whose improvised explosive devices made IED — improvised explosive device — a dreaded acronym among soldiers.”
This means, again, that David Hickman, a 23-year-old African-American, was killed by General Solemani, the man in charge of “training and supplying the bomb makers whose improvised explosive devices made IED — improvised explosive device — a dreaded acronym among soldiers.”
There’s more.
As reported in The Philadelphia Tribune:
“In Iraq, Blacks made up an average of 15 percent of combat troops in-country at any given time, and in the earliest weeks of the conflict accounted for a startlingly high percentage of casualties.”
In this 2004 story in The Guardian, this was reported:
“Black soldiers are a particular target. ‘To have Negroes occupying us is a particular humiliation,’ (a local fighter against Americans named) Abu Mujahed said, echoing the profound racism prevalent in much of the Middle East. ‘Sometimes we aborted a mission because there were no Negroes.’”
Get that quote? That there is “profound racism… in much of the Middle East”? Which in turn has meant that “Black soldiers are a particular target.”
The hard truth here is that Qassam Soleimani killed the young African-American David Hickman – and his forces deliberately target black US soldiers.
And what does Colin Kaepernick do? He sides with Soleimani. And April Ryan defends Kaepernick.
Wow. Just wow.
