Dan Crenshaw wants Gwen Berry kicked off the Olympic team. How un-American.
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There goes the dangerous Black athlete, betraying America again. Every time one of them stages a protest, some White politician has the sudden authoritarian urge to call for their banishment. Gwen Berry is no one’s internal enemy — especially not by today’s flagpole-stabbing, Capitol-sacking standards — but Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Tex.) is so threatened by her that he has demanded her removal from the U.S. Olympic team.
For what, exactly? For turning a skeptical shoulder to an American banner. Now that’s an eggshell brand of patriotism, if it can’t withstand Berry’s biceps.
It’s the tired-outness of Crenshaw’s rhetoric that is so discouraging. He either doesn’t recognize, or doesn’t want to recognize, what a baneful old tradition he is following when he suggests a Black protester must be sanctioned for anti-Americanism.
“I never said I hated this country!” she tweeted. “People try to put words in my mouth, but they can’t. That’s why I speak out.”
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