This week’s take on ‘Fun and Games’
Tributes have come gushing forth in celebration of the 10th anniversary of Colin Kaepernick’s infamous protest: The Kneel. Many praise Kaepernick for his courage and bold stand against racism and injustice.
But amid the tributes, a fundamental question deserves more attention: What specifically changed as a result of the protest? What evidence is there that it improved the lives of the people Kaepernick hoped to help?
Ten years have passed. That’s enough time to look beyond the symbolism and look at the results.
I’ll give Kaepernick the benefit of the doubt and assume his intentions were genuine. He wanted to make a positive difference in the African American community.
But in my view, there were three problems with his approach: the cause he chose, the method he used, and the consequences of his own career.
First, the cause.
If the goal was to improve lives in the African American community, were police brutality and racial injustice the greatest opportunity to do so? Or were there other challenges that deserved attention?
Consider education, stable families, and involved fathers. Thomas Sowell points to historical Census data showing that college-educated Black married couples earn more than college-educated White married couples.
Certainly, college education and traditional family values are not as glamorous as police brutality, but it’s hard to argue the facts.
Over two-thirds of African American babies (68.6%) are born to unwed mothers, nearly triple the number of non-Hispanic white babies (26.2%) born to unwed mothers.
There is a dramatic disparity in income levels between single African American mothers raising children ($47,756) and African American college-educated married couples ($104,479).
Here’s the irony.
Kaepernick himself was adopted and raised by parents who chose to provide a home for him. He now has a daughter of his own and is raising her with his wife.
He had firsthand experience of the difference a committed family can make in a child’s life. Imagine if, 10 years ago, he had used his platform to champion educational opportunity, involved fatherhood, and stable families.
How many young people might have benefited from a decade of sustained attention to those issues? We can’t know the answer, but it is a question worth asking.
Second, the method.
Kneeling during the national anthem was always going to be divisive. Many Americans saw it as disrespectful to the flag and to those who served and sacrificed for the country. That reaction became a major part of the story, sometimes overshadowing the message Kaepernick wanted to convey.
A protest can attract enormous attention and still leave people arguing about the protest itself rather than the problem it was meant to address.
Third, the consequences.
Kaepernick’s NFL career ended after the 2016 season. He has argued that he was blackballed because of his protest. Whether the protest alone explains what happened is disputed, but there is no question that he never returned to an NFL roster.
Could a different cause, pursued through a different method, have produced more tangible benefits for the community—and allowed him to continue pursuing his dream of being an NFL quarterback?
We can’t know.
But ten years later, that’s the question I keep coming back to: Did The Kneel actually make a difference—and what might have happened if Kaepernick had chosen a different way to use his voice?
IMHO the entire paradigm is one of both perception and intent.
For most NFL customers ‘the fans’, the grievance stemmed from the perception of disrespect specifically to the secular ‘trinity’ of country, flag, and anthem. At the very least it was a gross violation of protocol and etiquette.
After subsequent occurrences, many were ‘over’ the NFL in its entirety for ‘spinelessly’ allowing its employees to engage repeatedly in performative disrespect and contempt, during the same moments of the event.
Persons have been let go and corporations injured for far less. Fans did not spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to attend the revelry of a game only to be offered insult to their patriotic respects, souring the entire experience.
During the initial occurrence, the writer was at a ‘watching party’ of some 200 persons. The initial confusion as to what was happening, plus anger at the apparently anti-American behavior, overshadowed the message that Mr. Kapernick intended to offer, so more’s the pity.
The protest at another time in the event would likely have been more impactful and better-considered by fans numbering in the hundreds of millions and who pay the ultimate cost of this well-enjoyed and uniquely American-made sport and institution, whether by travel costs, ticket pricing, and cover charges, or by exposure to paid advertisements on television or streaming. There would not have been the same severe backlash if Mr. Kapernick had chosen or accepted a time and target that did not gravely offend the fans’ patriotic sensibilities. If it had been planned in cooperation with the NFL and held at the beginning of half-time, it would have been better appreciated. The writer suspects that the NFL would not have agreed to it anyway, so it seems a moot point. The NFL ‘allowing’ the repetition of the same offense can only be an attempt at damage control. The cause of the entire sad mess was the offense offered to the nation, and nothing else.
Joseph, thank you for the well-thought-out reply. I agree 100%…however noble the cause, the protest’s act itself took away from any chance he had in productively getting the message heard. There were much better ways to use his platform if he really wanted to make a difference.