Nick-Bosa-Trump-Supporter

Is Nick Bosa Racist Trump – Loving MAGA And So What If He Is?

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Is Nick Bosa racist Trump – Loving MAGA fantatic? And So What If He Is?

Nick Bosa of The Ohio State University is considered one of the best players available in the 2019 NFL Draft. And up until the 2019 NFL Combine, Bosa, the younger brother of Joey Bosa, now a defensive end with the San Diego Chargers, was considered the best player coming to the 2019 NFL Draft, period.

With that kind of status, and the promise of a signing bonus worth upwards of $30 million, comes a lot of scrutiny. In Bosa’s case, a series of tweets he issued and that came into focus in May of 2018 came back into public view, thanks to 247 Sports:

Over the weekend, Bosa tweeted “Black panther worst marvel movie of all time…” Of course, Bosa is referring to the recently released Marvel superhero movie, Black Panther, which reached $1.34 billion in worldwide earnings. The movie received rave reviews from many, but certainly not Bosa.

And that started a kind of online media talk around the question “Is Nick Bosa racist?” and which ranged from the “you can’t question a man’s views on race based on a movie” to Black Sports Online‘s Robert Lital, who grabbed all of Bosa’s racially questionable tweets, and pushed them out in one paragraph: “Potential #1 2019 NFL Draft Pick Nick Bosa Tweets Black Panther Was Worst Marvel Movie, Beyonce Music is Trash, Kaepernick is a Clown & Trump is The GOAT.”

And then, @RzstProgramming on Twitter had a field day tweeting out some of Nick Bosa’s other greatest hits in Twitter-based racism over 2019 NFL Combine weekend.

In fairness, it must be pointed out that Bosa deleted those tweets, but the whole deal brings up a series of questions, episodes, and thoughts in my brain. First one is this: Ok, so what if Nick Bosa comes off as a a couch-potato conservative (defined as one who’s not a real conservative, but who is only that for reasons tied to anti-intellectualism and racism and not respect for institutions or the mathematics of conservative economics) who supports President Trump? And maybe he’s not accustomed to black culture in America, hence his take on Beyonce and Black Panther?

The second main question is this: does Nick have active yet hidden anger against anyone because they’re black? Kind of like the kind Liam Neeson admitted to, if only to promote his movie Cold Pursuit? Given that he’s headed to an NFL that’s been rocked with scandals around politics and race, it’s fair to ask.

Look, it’s vitally important that we preserve American Democracy. From that perspective, we should welcome the friendship of someone who’s views aren’t like ours. That’s how one learns and grows.

Donald Trump
Donald Trump

And then there’s this one fact: I like Donald Trump, the business man on TV version – and I’m a card-carrying Democrat! No, I don’t like how Trump’s used race and racism to gain the highest office in the land, or how he treats President Obama, and I sure as heck don’t like the Russian ties, and the whole deal where he’s given support to white supremacists just to divide America stinks to high heaven, and I think impeachment proceedings are a good idea.

But the Donald Trump as presented on The Apprentice, the show I tried to get on? I like that person – I wish that Donald Trump ran for POTUS.

I’ve known a lot of people like the person Nick Bosa appears to be, and they have been more than acquaintances – they have been friends (yeah, I can say that too). There were the guys at the Kappas at The University of Texas at Arlington who invited me to pledge, but I couldn’t get pass the whole ‘blindfolded banana in the toilet’ routine.

Think about it.

Still, they treated me much better than the Kappa Alpha Psi brothers who refused to talk to me because I didn’t want to read tombstones in the driving rain. Yeah, I was ostracized by my own folks, yet these white guys I was told were “KKK” treated me like what they were: true friends. That was 1984. In Texas.

There was my friend, white, who believed that South Africa’s Apartheid regime was a good thing – I kid you not. Rather than take anything like physical action, I simply talked to him using the same calmly stated argument that rested on the U.S. Constitution, and that as Americans it was our duty to make sure people had true civil rights. I drilled down to talk about the economic inefficiencies of racism, and other problems that way of living produced. And I did all of this while studying with him, eating with him, and kicking the crap out of him at pool at the Texas Arlington Student Union.

Then, during the last month I was at UTA before taking off for Berkeley and City Planning Grad School, my friend said this: “Thanks for listening to me. You changed my mind.”

We Need To Talk And Listen Rather Than Just Tweet And Shout

Look, it’s important to know who Nick Bosa is, and every player in the NFL Draft. But the knowledge should not be used to put down a person or destroy them, but to understand how to work with them.

Give Nick a chance. I’m certain that if Nick understands what someone else is experiencing, someone black, he will listen. Indeed, if he doesn’t, he won’t last in the NFL. I think he knows that.

Stay tuned.