Race.

This is a photographers Forum. That's why my OT addresses the way some of us actually see. Rationality is irrelevant in the face of photographs.

I hope everybody here has adequate devices as well as enough curiosity to take a little time to view all the images in as quiet a way as they can manage, attempting to shut out the blinders of "opinions". I find that easy with some, very difficult with others.

It speaks of privilege to ask to be able to enjoy public sports without the social justice stuff that's been kept in the closets for centuries being brought forward in a simple and elegant way (kneeling). It also speaks of privilege to suggest a racially oppressed people behave according to the oppressors' concept of 'rational'.

^ Let us just enjoy a sport that 70% of its players are Afro-American and that only recently and still relunctantly acknowledges the dangers and lasting effects of concussions. The Games must go on...some Roman must have said awhile back. ^

I have read and looked at the images a few times through. I do not understand the words and images, I cannot understand them. I have always been a middle class white male. Even my years living in what some would consider poverty (it wasn't), I was still middle class because I always had the power and privilege to earn more if I wanted to play that game. But I can still be moved, still hear a message no matter how much I'll garble it. My earlier quote from the article was the one that happened to resonate the deepest in me and my life -- for far different reasons than the words' author, of course, but there was a feeling of empathy...imagined or otherwise.

Imagining is where photography begins.