Meeting President Barack Obama...No thanks

James Harrison, the NFL Defensive Player of the Year won’t be attending a trip to the White House with his Pittsburgh Steelers teammates. This will be his second White House rejection in three years because he also skipped an invite from President George W. Bush in 2006 after winning a previous Super Bowl.

“I don’t feel the need to go, actually,” Harrison told Pittsburgh station WTAE-TV. “I don’t feel like it’s that big a deal to me.” He said it wasn’t special because the Arizona Cardinals would be visiting President Obama had the Steelers not pulled out a last minute win to close out this year’s Super bowl.

He is correct, had the Cardinals won the Super bowl, they would be shaking hands with President Obama instead of the Steelers. Somewhere along the line, Harrison has missed the point.

It’s a common practice for the Super Bowl winners to get a trip to the White House. Like wining the Lombardi Trophy, a White House invite is a prize reserved for NFL world champions.

I am surprised at his stance. Harrison, an African American is too young to remember the struggles of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other African American activists. Had he been around back in the 60s, he wouldn’t be playing football under the lights of a multi-million dollar stadium.

Harrison would either be sitting on the back of a bus or being denied entry into restaurants that only served whites.

I am not sure what Harrison studied at Kent State but it couldn’t have been History. Otherwise, he would understand the relevance of President Barack Obama; America's first African American president. Let’s examine some history that Harrison missed while at Kent State.

Our lesson starts aboard a filthy and overcrowded slave ship where many slaves would die before ever seeing dry land again. Little did the surviving slaves know, the ones who died on the ships were fortunate. They would not live to see their children get sold off like cattle.

Let’s also take a look at the work of President Abraham Lincoln and the white soldiers who died in the Civil War to free the slaves they would never meet. More Americans died in the Civil War than any other conflict in American history. Harrison doesn’t understand that the South fought fiercely for the right to keep their slaves. Fortunately, the North won and slavery ended.

Harrison is a big strong football player who gets paid millions to play a kid’s game.

He lives the American dream.

He has more than any other African American had 100 years ago. His ability to earn money and play professional football came from sacrifices made by soldiers, an assassinated president, and abolitionists.

So after the condensed history lesson, I still ask,

“Is meeting the first Black president still not so important?”