NFL Legend Jim Brown: Black Community Has a 'Responsibility,' Stop Putting It All on Trump
NFL legend and social activist Jim Brown appeared on “Fox & Friends” Tuesday morning and delivered a charge to the “black community” by asking it to take responsibility over shifting the blame onto President Donald Trump.
The former star running back started the interview by heaping praise on Trump for being “accessible.”
He told Fox’s Brian Kilmeade, “I have access to the president, and anytime I have access to the president, and he will listen to my thoughts, that’s all I can ask of him.”
“This president is accessible,” Brown said. “He’s different. He’s challenging, and he pays attention to what I say.”
Brown then turned his attention to the black community, telling Kilmeade, “We should look at ourselves first before we look at the president.”
Kilmede asked him if he felt Trump was doing a good job of “producing” for the black community.
“Well, I tell you it’s very hard to produce for the black community in a certain way,” Brown replied. “The black community, and I’m a part of the black community, has a responsibility regardless of what the president does. If you have a homicide rate in your black community, then it’s not the president that’s created that homicide rate. It’s the black community itself that needs to address it.”
“So I don’t want to put everything on him, and I’m sorry to say the black community is not doing what we should do, and that includes myself,” Brown added.
Kilmede asked Brown if he believed the president to be a racist.
“I’m so glad you asked me that,” Brown replied. “Of course not. Is America racist? Of course not.”
Brown went on talk about the national anthem protests saying, “We should never denigrate our flag and our national anthem. We should always be Americans first and we should work our butts off to do the right thing and make it a better country.”
“But to not respect your flag and national anthem is something I’d never do,” he added.
Brown’s comments came one week after an interview with Fox Sports Radio in which he, unlike many black athletes, admitted he was rooting for Trump to succeed.
“I should be criticizing Trump on every level because he does certain things that call for criticism,” he said in the interview. “But when I look at television I see all these announcers become experts and they’re pointing the fingers and they’re not doing a doggone thing but pointing their fingers, I find myself really pulling for the president.
“Now, that would make me very unpopular in the black community, very unpopular with a lot of Americans,” Brown added. “But I think that there are certain good things that are coming out of this presidency because we’ve never seen anything like it.”
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