Imrem: 2010s starting to feel like the 1960s

The 2010s are starting to look like the new 1960s.

Man, were those ever wild and crazy times back then, in and out of sports.

Unrest over the racial divide … Christian names changing to Muslim names … black fists in the air during the national anthem … college campuses on fire over the war in Vietnam … American flags burned in the streets … protest songs on mainstream radio … public figures being assassinated …

Those were the days before athletes became brands, when conscience was more important to them than commerce.

Maybe they have so much money now that they can afford to take stands on what they believe ails society.

Derrick Rose's warmup T-shirt — “I can't breathe” — was something Cassius Clay might have worn in the gym after he became Muhammad Ali.

In an ideal world, the gesture would initiate conversation between opposing sides. In the real world, it seems to ignite snickers and screams.

For a few decades, athletes went in the other direction, reluctant to speak out for fear of losing endorsement money.

Maybe the trend in sports is reverting to when black athletes couldn't tolerate what was happening in their old neighborhoods and people of all colors feared a war that could happen to them.

Athletes like Derrick Rose and LeBron James have so much money that they can become activists now if they want, like Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were back then.

Was Rose right to wear his statement in the United Center before a game over the weekend? Were St. Louis Rams players right to run onto the field for a game with their hands up to protest police actions in Ferguson? Are other athletes right to scribble messages on their shoes to get their point across?

Or were they wrong to express their views in a forum where thousands of fans in the stands came to escape the worries of the world?

Depends on where you come from, both geographically and philosophically, and that doesn't always come down to color.

Some blacks take the cops' side in the cases in both Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City. Meanwhile, a lot of whites take the side of those protesting what the police did.

To me, having come out of the '60s turmoil and seen protests help initiate change, it's OK when athletes demonstrate whatever social viewpoints they have, for whichever side they take on the current hot issues.

I'm not always thrilled that it comes in the context of a sporting event, but emotions like these often know no boundaries.

Remarkable is that this still is occurring nearly 50 years after so much blood was spilled on city streets and even in some sports arenas to close the gap between the races. There was so much hatred back then, so much friction, so much tension, so much “you're either with us or you're against us.”

To many white people, looting in urban areas defined blacks. To many black people, insensitivity to the inequality in the justice system defined whites.

As the Buffalo Springfield lyric from back then goes, “Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.”

So, are we headed backward into wild and crazy? Didn't electing a black president indicate we were beyond this sort of strife? Or did that just disguise and proliferate the distrust between the races?

It's so disappointing, if not downright depressing, that we still have to ask those questions.

So sad, too, that 2010s are starting to look like the 1960s all over again.