On the Sept. 25 edition of Monday Night Football, the Dallas Cowboys and Arizona Cardinals each locked arms as a team during the unfurling of the American flag. Some of you may be asking yourselves why exactly these teams would perform such gestures before the commencement of a football game.
The gestures dates back to the 2016 preseason, when former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat, and later kneeled, during the national anthem saying, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color… There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and people getting away with murder.”
Kaepernick is referring to incidents of police violence that many agree to be racially motivated. The most infamous example being the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 by a police officer that led to the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. More recently, a police officer in St. Louis was found “not-guilty” after fatally shooting a black man. According to the Washington Post, 730 people have been killed by the police since the beginning of 2017.
The kneeling of players is something that makes a large sect of America rather uncomfortable, even angry, and it is interesting when you think about exactly why that is.
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to peacefully protest, and kneeling by yourself or as part of a team is arguably as peaceful as it gets. Many people have said that the gestures are disrespectful to the flag, the military and the nation itself. You can absolutely make that argument, but my belief is that these protests are better than they’ve ever been.
Before, you had individual players that would kneel. Now, you have entire teams, including the executives, performing the gesture as a peaceful protest and a conversation-starter. What’s better is now teams are performing the gestures before the anthem even takes place.
This is no longer simply a player with an ideology separate from the team. This is not one player with a philosophy or a belief or a mission that is so uncomfortable for people or so extreme that it cannot be supported by their team.
There are now entire franchises from the bottom all the way up to the top that believe in the importance of the discussion of police brutality and racially-driven injustices that it should be brought to the forefront of American public discussion.
The NFL is one of the most popular and ubiquitous sports leagues. It engages nearly every single household in America.
The NFL players recognize the power and influence of their brand. With a following of millions, the players see this opportunity as a chance to ignite the conversation: black people and other minorities are repeatedly mistreated under the law, so what can we do as a community to change this behavior?
It is up to the players, and hopefully the entire franchises, to continue to clearly convey their message. It is up to the American people, the millions of households, to discuss this issue and resolve to act. The American people should not see this protest as disrespecting the American flag, the military, the anthem or the nation. Players are protesting racially-motivated injustices, something that affects many of us in this country.
The NFL players love this country, that’s why they care so much about seeing it become a place where everyone is equally protected under the law.
With all that being said, I commend the players and teams for coming together to peacefully protest and raise a discussion in a way that can both clearly convey their message and be respectful to the flag. Hopefully one day the message will be received, and the nation will respond with a solution.
