Have you ever tried to have a conversation with someone who's done wrong by you? Have you ever brought up your misgivings to that person and, instead of them taking responsibility or accountability for any wrongdoing, they respond with outrage towards you for even daring to suggest that they are capable of committing wrong? Suddenly, a conversation intended to address likely justifiable tension turns on its head—now, it is a conversation about how your dissatisfaction has somehow hurt the person who may be hurting you. Suddenly, you find yourself apologizing in spite of having done nothing but speak up.

This is a form of gaslighting, this is the kind of relationship that many marginalized communities have with the powers that be in America. And the discourse surrounding the flag, national anthem and kneeling is a perfect example of how that relationship plays out. A movement intended to address police brutality and the unequal treatment of people of color under the law has now morphed into a conversation about patriotism and respect for the country, an unnecessary detour that has derailed the true intentions of these protests. When injustice is pointed out, those who either cannot or will not educate themselves or empathize with others will do everything in their power to silence and demonize those in dissent, no matter how peaceful they may be, simply for vocalizing their truth. They view conversations about race to be inherently "divisive," and suggest that the mere acknowledgment of racism is the real source of racial tension, a perspective that lends itself readily to the colorblind politics of a supposedly post-racial America. Also, a perspective that is based in a carefully crafted idealism, not reality. How does attempting to address an issue perpetuate it? What problems have ever gone away by just ignoring them?

Of course, this country has never been shy about race. After centuries of policies both implicitly and very explicitly designed to disenfranchise people of color, why are we so hesitant to address the ever-persistent results of systemic racial inequality? There has always been a racial narrative in this country, and it's odd to me that the same group of people who condemn Black Lives Matter protesters for daring to ask that police are more mindful of their treatment of black people and write them off as purveyors of hollow "identity politics," are generally the same group of people who had no trouble sympathizing with the woes of disgruntled white working class Americans.

This leads me to believe that most folks don't have an issue with kneeling, or protests, or even talking about race (see: white protesters in Charlottesville). They have an issue with black people talking about race. When the racial narrative that has always existed in this country finally centers around the betterment of traditionally oppressed communities as opposed to perpetuating the status quo, people feel scared. The problem for most, it seems, is not that the long-standing American racial narrative has continued in the form of National Anthem protests, but perhaps it is that slowly, the control of this narrative is beginning to belong to the very people it sought to suppress.