AN EVEN PLAYING FIELD IS IMPOSSIBLE IN AMERICA!
Dale Hansen is a rare bird in sports broadcasting (honest). He got my attention when he was honored in Washington, DC several years ago as “The Television Sportscaster of the Year.”
I googled him and discovered to no surprise, he was using the unheard of Original Inside Sports format (Sports & Politics) that I start airing in 1972.
I called his office in Dallas and left a message congratulating him and reminded him, he was using my sports talk format from 1972. I emailed him some background proof (videos). His response I could not believe. He called and left this message, “Harold, this is Dale Hansen in Dallas. I lost your telephone number when you called the other day. I finally had to track through your notes and I finally found it. I am sorry I didn’t get back to you. Your stuff is fantastic to read about. Everything you have done makes my little bit a peeling off of White Privilege and rather insignificant, but I thank you for sharing this with me. I hope you get this message, Thank you, sir, thank you very much.”
The more things change the more they remain the same for example, Dallas sportscaster Dale Hansen (ret) and Senator Stephanie Flowers (D-Pine Bluff Ark) in color and black and white.
Senator Stephanie Flowers is the seventh of nine children of the late attorney, W. Harold Flowers, and educator, Margaret Brown Flowers.
She was born on August 8, 1953, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. She graduated from Pine Bluff High School, Philander Smith College and the Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. While in law school she served as the Research Editor for the law review journal.
Senator Flowers is a lawyer. She was first licensed to practice law in Texas in 1982 and in Arkansas in 1991. She has been in private practice since 1982, nine years in Houston and 34 years in Pine Bluff. She is a member of the Jefferson County Bar Association and several law associations, including the W. Harold Flowers Law Society that is named in honor of her father.
Senator Flowers served as deputy prosecutor in juvenile court in Jefferson County, Arkansas, for one year, in 1994. She ran for Juvenile Judge in Jefferson County in 1994 as an independent. That was prior to the passage of a state law that made all judicial races nonpartisan. She lost to the incumbent Democrat.
In 2004 she successfully ran for the Arkansas state House of Representatives from District 17 and served three terms. In 2010 she successfully ran for the state Senate, District 5, and has continued service in the State Senate. Senator Flowers is currently in her final four-year term. She represents Senate District 8, which covers parts of Jefferson, Lincoln, Desha, Arkansas, Lonoke, and Pulaski Counties.
As a state senator she has served as an Assistant President Pro Tempore of the Arkansas Senate. In the current 95th Arkansas General Assembly she serves on the Senate Education Committee and the Senate Insurance and Commerce Committee.
Senator Flowers is a strong supporter of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and in 2025 sponsored an appropriation to enable UAPB to build a new police station. Also during the 2025 session she co-sponsored legislation to provide a free breakfast to every Arkansas public school child. Senator Flowers also co-sponsored legislation to increase the Homestead Property Tax Credit.
Senator Flowers co-sponsored Act 154 of 2021, a tax cut for people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Because their unemployment benefits were not taxed by the state, they saved $59 million in state income taxes.
Senator Flowers has sponsored legislation to foster community support for public schools, such as Act 1507 of 2013 to expand the ability of schools to hold events. She sponsored Act 1002 of 2011 and Act 1423 of 2013 to make parental involvement plans more user-friendly and more effective. During each session, she consistently sponsors bills to fund after-school programs, drug abuse treatment and services for juveniles in the justice system.
Many of the measures that she sponsors are appropriations that flow through the legislative process quietly, after Senator Flowers has reached a consensus with other committee members.
Those appropriations set funding levels for the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Southeast Arkansas College, the Southeast Arkansas Economic Development District, the Rural Services Department, the Heritage Department, literacy programs and senior citizens centers.
Another of Senator Flowers’ priorities is to expand and improve re-entry training of inmates to help them better prepare for a productive life outside prison. For example, she was instrumental in creating a program in which probationers and parolees clear condemned properties.
In 2017, she co-sponsored a package of bills to strengthen ethics and campaign finance laws. She also co-sponsored legislation to create a monument on the state capitol grounds honoring Gold Star Families who lost a loved one during active military service. In 2019, she co-sponsored a major highway program and legislation to set up a grant program for improvements at historically black colleges and universities.
She was honored to serve as a member of the Executive Committee of the Arkansas state Democratic Party under the late chairman, Bill Gwatney.
She was elected as a delegate to the Democratic National Committee in 2008 in support of Barack Obama. She is a member of the National Association of University Women and the Jefferson County Democratic Women.
Senator Flowers is active in her community and supports projects that make a difference in the lives of young people, adults and seniors of her district. Her perspective is not limited to Senate District 8, however. She appreciates the concerns of all Arkansas residents and supports initiatives that benefit the entire state.
Senator Flowers has one son, William Zeri. She is a member of the Mount Pleasant A.M.E. Church.
Dallas WFFA TV 8 sportscaster Dale Hansen’s commentary on White Privilege went viral several years ago relating to the ongoing racism in the NFL as it related to the hiring, non-hiring and firing of black head coaches. In a sport where 70% of the players are black, black coaches are few, far and in-between. Black ownership is non-existent.
Major League baseball finds itself in the same league, out of 30 teams there were only two black managers at the of the 2023 season.
This is the sport that Jackie Robinson kicked the door down in 1947 dreaming more black Americans would be given the opportunity to play in America’s pastime.
In 2023 there were less than 10% black Afro-American players on tMajor Leaugue Baseball rosters, and there are no black owners, but still on April 15th every major league baseball player’s uniform will have the number 42 stitched on the back of it celebrating Jackie Robinson Day.
The GREAT Jackie Robinson-‘He Never Played the Game.’ He was a man’s man on and off the field!
If Major League Baseball was really honest only the players who are Afro-American would be wearing No. 42. Then you would see they are perpetrating a fraud.
The NBA is making some progress when it comes to hiring black coaches. They are now the standard bearers when it comes Black Head coaches. Makes sense players of color make up 75% of the players on the court.
The NBA has one token black owner–Michael Jordan. These celebrations are especially disturbing to me during these fake black history month celebrations. The celebrations should be called exactly what they really are–’56 years after the murder of our Prince of Peace and our No. 1 theme is still “We Shall Overcome.”
I have been asking the same question since 1972 why are pro sports franchises and white folks pretending to celebrate ML King day every year-keep hope alive?
The charade continues you add on to this lack of progress to the recent FBI discovery that several elite hollywood actresses and CEOs have been paying brides to get their dumb ass kids admitted to some of the elite colleges in the country by scaming the SAT and ACT admission exams.
There is some good news, thanks to White Privilege so far there were no Negroes, coloreds, coons, jigger boos, Afro-Americans or Ns found in the wood pile—this scam was for whites only .
The scammers and master-minds in-charge was a CEO by the name of Rick Singer and a tennis player and graduate of Havard University by the name of Mark Riddell. The FBI seized a non-profit bank account own by Singer and found 52 million dollars in the account. This scam is the biggest ever in college academic history. To no surprise the biggest college scammer were the NCAA.
The arm of college sports—the coaches were being paid millions of dollars in salaries and the slave mentality athletes were paid next to nothing.
That has changed several years ago a group of college athletes sued the NCAA. They had their day in court. The NCAA skirted around the courts again when Judge Claudia Wilken criticize and berated the organization and then ruled in favor of the players, but gave the NCAA permission to continue the status quo and continue business as usual?
On this confusing ruling I think I am going to have let Dale Hansen explain exactly what happen because I don’t have a clue. He understands White Privilege better than I.
Without a doubt the athletes are in a better place in 2024 with endorsement opportunities (some have obtained millionaire status) and the transfer portal. The portal allows them to seek employment else where without penalty.
But I do have some understanding of racism and what State Senator Stephanie Flowers went through in Arkansas as it relates to a “Stand Your Ground” law on the books in Arkansas. In February 1957 The Little Rock 8 arrived at the door of Central High School as a result of Brown vs Board of Education. It was the first day of school but they were prevented from entering the school.
The Arkansas National Guard under the orders of Governor Oval Faubus blocked their path.
Let us Fast forward to Little Rock March 2019 sixty-two years later. State Senator Stephanie Flowers a black lawmaker refused to have her path blocked and refused to retreat when her white, male colleagues moved to cut off debate on a bill that would let Arkansas residents use lethal force as the first line of self-defense if they felt threatened (White Privilege).
This bill was law in 31 other states in the United States of America. I just learned thanks to Senator Flowers that out of the 50 states in the United States of America, 31 states have Stand Your Ground Laws—are you kidding me?
That stat has since been updated to 38 states with Stand Your Ground laws.
The Stand Your Ground law has replaced the rope and you can now be lynched by a gun and bullet as law-enforcement has proven around the country.
After her deeply personal tirade against so-called, “stand your ground” propositions, the bill was defeated. The video of the comments, which allude to racial tensions simmering far beyond Little Rock, had gone viral.
Senator Flowers tells her white colleagues, “I’m the only person here of color, OK. I am a mother, too, and I have a son, and I care as much for my son as you care for yours, but my son doesn’t walk the same path as yours does (White Privilege),” Flowers, a Democrat said, Wednesday during debate “So, this debate deserves more time.”
“For a long time since I’ve been back here in Arkansas, I have feared for my son’s life,” she said, according to the meeting notes.
“Now, he’s 27 and he’s out of Arkansas, and I thank God he is when you’re bringing up crap like this. It offends me. And then you want to limit the debate, too. This is crazy.”
Flowers, the panel’s vice chair, demanded the floor after some senators tried to curb her debate time that would ditch the “duty to retreat” clause in state law. It obligates people who feel threatened to try to escape the situation before using force.
The critical change, which some politicians in Arkansas oppose, would align with “stand your ground” laws in at least 31 states where there is no duty to retreat an attacker in any place someone has a legal right to be.
She reminded them, “You can’t silence me!’
Such measures have come under scrutiny nationwide, particularly after a July shooting in Florida. A sheriff there said “stand your ground” laws prevented him from arresting the shooter who was white, after he fatally shot Markeis McGlockton, who was black, over a parking spot. The local prosecutor later charged the shooter with manslaughter; the shooter has said he shot McGlockton in self-defense.
“It doesn’t take much to look at the local news every night and see how many black kids, black boys, and black men are being killed with these ‘stand your ground’ defenses that these people raise, and substantial racial disparities exist in the application of “stand your ground” laws, experts have found.
Defendants in Florida were nearly twice as likely to be convicted in a case involving white victims than in cases with victims of color, according to a 2015 study in Social Science & Medicine. Nationwide, the rate of justifiable homicide was 34% in cases in which the shooter was white and the victim was black, compared with only 3% in cases with a black shooter and a white victim, the Urban Institute found in 2012. they get off,” Flowers told her fellow lawmakers Wednesday. As Flowers spoke, Republican state Sen. Alan Clark, the committee’s chairman, at one point interrupted her, saying, “Senator, you need to stop.”
“No, I don’t,” Flowers responded.
“Yes, you do,” Clark insisted.
“No, I don’t. What the hell you going to do, shoot me?” she asked, adding moments later, “Do what the hell you want to do, go ahead, but you can’t silence me.”
“Sen. Flowers, if anybody hasn’t tried to silence you, it’s me,” Clark replied. She then got up and left the debate on “Lynching by gun!”
After public testimony on the matter, the bill — this is what I find rather ironic, the bill was opposed by state police, the Arkansas Sheriff’s Association and Arkansas Moms Demand — The bill failed by one vote, though its sponsor hopes to bring it back up Monday March 11th.
The controversial Stand Your Ground bill passed the Arkansas Senate, but was voted down in the House Committee, effectively keeping the bill from becoming law.
Senator Flowers was the only black on this committee with white men. My question is, “Where are all the black men?” I salute, kneel down and take my hat off to State Senator Stephanie Flowers a woman of COURAGE, which is also lacking in the black community in 2024. Especially, found lacking by black men in pro football during the Colin Kapernick kneel-in.
Senator Flowers refused to be bullied by a bunch of cowards who have hidden behind a rope for over 400 years and now they wanted to hide behind White Privilege and a gun.
I have spend the past 50+ years working in the war zones of the inner-city and I have seen black on black gun violence up close. I lost two brothers who decided to make law-enforcement their career choices and left here much “Too soon” because of of their efforts to fight crime in their community and in their work places.
My older brother was a U. S. Marshall for 20 years and my younger brother Earl was a DC cop for 14 years. When they didn’t go along to get along, they both were confronted with “The Thin Blue Line and Code of Silence.”
COPS IN THE FAMILY: EARL AND BOBBY WITH HATTIE T AND MOMMY B
EARL WITH DC’S FIRST BLACK POLICE CHIEF-BURTELL JEFFERSON
This blue wall still exist in police departments around this country who already operate under the premise of “Stand Your Ground” when it comes to black America.
I find it rather ironic when I hear cops who are paid to protect and serve cry “Its us against them!” They forget that this is a job that they volunteered for–they where not drafted.
If it is too hot in the kitchen get the hell out and find a job working from your home behind a computer than behind a shield, gun and oath that you took to protect and serve.
The Stand Your Ground law is another form of “White Privilege” as are bankruptcy laws, white collar crime, Red lining, grand juries, justice & just-us judicial system and a list of other hidden agendas they keep hidden to make sure we stay in our lane! No one is “Playing Fair and there will never be an Even Playing Field” as long as there is White Privilege. Hats off to Dale Hansen and Senator Stephanie Flowers.
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