The 2013 NFC National Championship. First and 10 at the Seattle 18. The 12th Man roaring. Kaepernick to the end zone. Intercepted. Game over.
Fast forward four years, and Kaepernick’s actions are again making waves in the league — though this time not on the field. In an attempt to bring racism and oppression to light, Kaepernick knelt during the anthem in 2016. It started a movement.
If you’ve peeped at the comments thread on any NFL Facebook post recently, you’ll see an overflowing of angry comments threatening to boycott the league. Here are some examples:
“NFL stands for “National” Football League … they no longer represent the Nation … it’s now LFL (‘Liberal’ Football League).”
“Another day, not spending a dime on the NFL nor its sponsors. Why? Because I stand and I stand tall! I don’t need millions to make a point, but I’m teaching my children life what integrity means and why the NFL has none.”
“There was a football tonight? I was watching the best World Series game ever … Pound sand, protesting football idiots … take a knee, you’ve 1uped your status … Idiot.”
I’m not even quite sure what the third person was saying, but the overarching message of all three is pretty much the same: Kneeling is unpatriotic, and we will boycott this blasphemy. This doesn’t really make sense to me. Wasn’t this country founded on the principles of protest? Instead of kneeling, our founding fathers trespassed and chucked millions of dollars of tea into a harbor, and we celebrate that! The right to speak our mind and to let our values be known is fundamental to our democracy; to go against this is truly unpatriotic.
And not only that, these players are shining the national spotlight on racial inequality, a huge problem in the U.S., especially after events in Ferguson, Raleigh, Tulsa etc. Why is that such a bad thing? Many people on these message boards like to claim that “oh, these players make so much money, so what do they know about racism?” as an attempt to delegitimize the point the players are making — but I invite people to check out the case of Michael Bennett. Also, the assertion that one needs to experience something in order to talk about it or protest it is malarkey. Does that mean men can’t be feminists because they’ve never experienced the oppression women have lived through? Does that mean Donald Trump can’t make policies for the common people because he’s never been one of them? These players have every right to fight for a movement they believe in that affects their brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, cousins back home.
Finally, a lot of people make this about disrespecting veterans. This concern is much more valid than the preceding argument, but it is troubling to refer to veterans as a monolith. There are many different views of the military, and it’s unfair to consolidate all of these perspectives into a single message. As veteran Shea Jones noted: “Often (veterans) are used as a counter because no one wants to go against veterans’ issues.” I’m not really in a position to remark about how exactly veterans feel, but I think this tweet is particularly telling. Additionally, Kaepernick originally got his idea to kneel from a veteran, Nate Boyer, as a sign of respect. It seems that Kaepernick’s demonstrations were never meant to directly disrespect veterans.
Veterans certainly have a right to be ticked about the flag, but they also have the right to support the kneeling; we can’t generalize how they feel about the flag. Unless someone is or has tight connections with a veteran, they usually have no place in using the “you’re disrespecting all the veterans” argument. There’s a clear distinction between using another group of people as a prop to further your own agenda (as in this case) and participating in and bettering a movement you truly believe in (as in the case of male feminists). So if someone with no real relation to veterans pulls this argument, they’re most likely someone looking for an excuse to look the other way when it comes to racial inequality.
I used to be against the whole “kneelers” movement too. I thought it was something silly and sensationalized — after all, football is just a game, so is there any place for politics here? But the more I thought about it, I realized, what’s the use of having such a large platform and doing nothing to solve the problems you see around the world? It’s great when a player wants to create an organization to help underprivileged children in inner cities, but what’s so different about wanting to support a movement to improve race relations? There are problems in society that we cannot brush under the rug any longer.
It’s absolutely incredible to me that “grown” men would rather throw a temper tantrum and burn hundreds of dollars in team gear and merchandise than to even consider the possibility that there might be a problem with the current state of the union. Of course, they’re entitled to do so, but still, does that solve anything? At least in the case of Kaepernick and the Boston Tea Party, they had an end goal and a desire to see positive change — these bozos just seem to want to proclaim to the world “hey, we don’t see racial inequality as a problem at all!”
Instead of focusing so hard on whomever’s feelings are hurt by some people kneeling, we should focus on the message they’re trying to expose to the world: Oppression based on race is a very real and significant problem. I think the kneelers have done a fantastic job in inspiring a deep, national conversation and real change.
At the end of the day, as a nation, we have to decide what we care about more: the fact that players are kneeling or what exactly they’re kneeling for. After all, if we were able to make progress towards fighting inequality, these players would stop kneeling, right?
Contact Tiger Sun at tgsun ‘at’ stanford.edu.