Sylvia Thompson on NFL: Enough With the Victimhood Millionaire Athletes-Commentary!
Summary of eRumor:
Conservative commentator Sylvia Thompson penned a column on NFL protests titled, “Enough With the Victimhood: Millionaire Athletes and Their Lost Cause,” in October 2017.
The Truth:
This take by Sylvia Thompson on NFL protests appeared at the blog site BarbWire.com on October 1, 2017. The column appeared under the headline, “Enough With the Victimhood: Millionaire Athletes and Their Lost Cause,” and blames the Left for advancing the ‘myth” of racial inequality.
The column takes issue with NFL national anthem protests that were initiated by former quarterback Colin Kaepernick in 2016. Sylvia Thompson, who identifies herself as “a black conservative,” writes that black victimhood is the result of decades of efforts by white progressive leftists to advance an anti-American agenda:
Black victims these days, for the most part, are the product of decades of Black Americans being used primarily by white progressive leftists to advance an anti-American agenda.
Sylvia Thompson goes on to write that the Left has manipulated “guilt-conflicted white coaches” and “victimhood-conflicted” black players into “ensuring the demise of lucrative paychecks.”
Sylvia Thompson then takes aim at the target of national anthem protests: police brutality and social inequality. Thompson writes that black men have taken their queues from “the racists” President Obama and former Attorney General Eric Holder:
These two men, abusing their federal powers, gave young blacks the impression they need not heed the law, because laws are somehow unjust when they are applied to black Americans. The NFL lot, and any other athletes taking a similar stance, are also influenced by Obama’s and Holder’s disdain for law and law enforcement.
The column represents the personal opinions of Sylvia Thompson on NFL protests and racial inequality in America. Thompson doesn’t cite any statistics or real-life examples to back up her claims that can be fact-checked, and we don’t fact-check opinions. That’s why we’re classifying this one as “commentary.”
Sylvia Thompson’s bio at BarbWire.com states that she’s a copyeditor by trade who grew up in Tennessee during the Jim Crowe era. As for Thompson’s ideological believes, the bio states, “she concludes that race relations in America will never improve as long as the voices of many are stifled by intimidation from the few.”
And we’ve come across Sylvia Thompson’s commentaries in the past. Thompson has been a longtime vocal critic of President Obama, and Democrats in general, and she has the bylines to prove it. She wrote a blistering take on Obama’s legacy, or lack thereof, that went viral in October 2015. Thompson wrote that Obama was not leaving a legacy behind because the term “legacy” carries a positive connotation, and “everything that Barack Obama does is calculated to destroy America, which he despises.” Again, we chalked that one up as commentary since Thompson was expressing her personal views.