ESPN Is Racist… Apparently

On August 15th, 2017, ESPN aired a live fantasy football auction draft in which a select group of “owners” bid on players to add on to their fantasy teams… And apparently, that’s racist. The draft consisted of having multiple players’ faces on sticks and each person in the auction would bid a certain amount of money to add those players to their fantasy teams.
 
Now, I won’t go into the details of how fantasy football works, since it's not all that relevant for the purpose of this article. The important thing is that this is auction draft is something that’s been happening for a while now, not just on that particular Tuesday.
 
Among the players auctioned in that draft were Odell Beckham Jr. (large part of the reason why this is even a big deal right now), who tweeted that he was left “speechless” from seeing a cutout picture of his face on a stick. Another player that was in that auction draft was 5x Superbowl champion Tom Brady, who was sold for $20… oh, and is White.
 
But that’s not what matters here. What matters is that the Left sees something as tame as an auction draft and deems it offensive because they don’t really know much about it. Even ESPN has said that “Without that context, we understand the optics could be portrayed as offensive, and we apologize.” The Left went haywire on ESPN for the auction draft, not knowing that it’s pretty normal for a fantasy football draft, and bullied ESPN into apologizing.
 
Now, I won’t defend ESPN, mostly because they are almost as bad as any other MSM source out there with their left-wing politics. But this is not something that anyone should have to apologize for. According to the UK Daily Mail, “one shocked viewer said: ‘ESPN sold Odell on an auction block to a crowd of White people. In 2017.’” There’s a couple of things I want to address here.
 
First, I love how this twitter user purposefully avoids giving the proper context to make this seem far worse than it really is. When you see someone tweeting that an organization has sold a person on an auction block, your mind would immediately think of a slave auction. This person purposefully made it seem that way, because if he/she were to give the proper context, it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal. In today’s world, we’re taught to react emotionally and avoid critical thinking. That you should avoid questioning sources and just take information given to you as though it were sacred. No one is taught to critically think anymore.
 
When you read that kind of tweet, many won’t think “Hmm? What are you talking about here? What’s the context of this scenario?” No, many will think “WHAT?! HOW DARE THEY DO THAT TO ANOTHER HUMAN BEING?! HOW?!” People will react emotionally first and will avoid critically thinking to better understand the context of the situation. It actually reminds me of something I saw on social media during the 2016 election…
 
This was before the nominees had been named on either party and Hillary Clinton was going up against Bernie Sanders. Someone on Facebook had shared what seemed to be a poster promoting Crazy Bernie, and among one of the many promises the poster made that would happen with a President Sanders, it said that he would “end racism”. I’ll admit, I started cracking up at that. “How is Bernie Sanders going to ‘end racism’ as the poster promises?”, I thought. I might’ve been the only person that saw that poster that actually thought about it. When you see a poster that promises this person will end racism, most people will think “awesome!” They are not taught to think “well, how is he going to do that? Because there are many people that are, indeed, racist.” *ahem* the Democrats *ahem*.
 
So when I see that tweet about the auction draft, I thought “what’s the context here?”, but I doubt many other people thought that as well.
 
The next thing I want to cover is the fact that that twitter user mentioned the crowd was “White”. You’d think it wouldn’t matter what color the purchasing group is if they’re “buying human beings”. What does it matter that they were White? Would it have been better if the crowd had been mostly black or Hispanic? Would that have made this not “racist” according to them? If you see human beings being “sold” to people, what does it matter what the color of the customer’s skin is? But this is the point of identity politics: White people are the worst and are always to blame no matter what.
 
If a white person runs over a crowd of people, killing one and injuring a dozen others, he’s a hateful domestic terrorist and represents all white people. If a Muslim runs over a crowd of people with a truck, killing multiple people and injuring many more, it’s not a representation of the rest of their “peaceful” religion.
 
And the last thing I want to cover is the fact that the twitter user finished that tweet with: “… In 2017.” Ahh, yes. The fact that it’s 2017 definitely means something. To me, it means that it’s no longer 2016 and it’s almost 2018. To the Left, it’s a valid argument to tell people they’re offensive and intolerant and that they should be more progressive. That gays should be allowed to marry, men be allowed to use women’s public restrooms, illegals are not criminals, and that Muslims just want to hug you. All a bunch of b.s. The fact that it’s 2017 doesn’t matter in the least. Yes, we’ve made progress since the last couple of centuries with the abolition of slavery and desegregation (to the protest of the Democrat Party), but the fact that it’s 2017 doesn’t really mean anything.
 
In 2018, some people will still be racist. In 2025, the Left will still be crazy (if not crazier, by then). Point is, times may change, but people scarcely do. When someone says “it’s 2017”, all that really does to me is let me know that the other person is aware of the concept of time. It means next to nothing else to me.
 
But my point is that people have been taught to only react emotionally and leave critical thinking out of every situation. ESPN didn’t have to apologize for airing a live auction draft of NFL players and people shouldn’t have overreacted to such a non-issue. That auction wasn’t racist, it’s a part of the fantasy football draft process for the upcoming NFL season.
 
As another Twitter user with some actual sense said on the matter: “Not everything is racist.”
 
Romans 16:17
“I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught; avoid them.”