The NFL Takes on Trump—but Is It What Colin Kaepernick Wanted?
When Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem of a preseason NFL game just over a year ago, he did so at the end of a hostile summer that claimed the lives of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two unarmed black men who were gunned down by law enforcement. The 49ers quarterback was mindful of a singularly American truth: the distance between life and death for black people is shorter, and more precarious, than for most.
As the 2016–17 season pushed forward, the loss continued, its pace relentless: Anthony Ford, Terence Crutcher, Keith Lamont Scott. All unarmed and shot by police. A handful of players joined Kaepernick in silent protest. Still, the league ignored the roar of the world. Its willful evasion was almost a matter of policy: For decades the NFL has tried to keep politics out of the game and protect the purity of its brand, which also meant ignoring the realities of CTE, painkiller addiction, and domestic abuse in the league.
But the pull of history is unavoidable. On Sunday, galvanized by President Trump’s recent remarks in which he exhorted team owners to “fire” any “son of a bitch” who refused to stand for the national anthem, hundreds of players took a cue from Kaepernick and kneeled in harmonious dissent. Last night, on Monday Night Football, Dallas Cowboys players and coaching staff locked arms while their opponents were announced. On the surface, the demonstrations were moving and powerful. Yet, it was hard to divine anyone’s motivations. Had the parade of black death finally become too heavy a load for players and team owners to cast aside, or were they simply pushing back against Trump’s remarks?
Had the parade of black death finally become too heavy a load for players and team owners to cast aside, or were they simply pushing back against Trump’s remarks?
As president, Trump has done his very best to preserve the ways of white supremacy. In a mere nine months, he has attempted to strip health care from millions of people, sympathized with white nationalists, and attacked US citizens who simply exercised their right of free speech. His continued defense of his own invective—doubling down on Twitter, then doubling down again—suggests that he sees kneeling during the anthem as unpatriotic. But patriotism in America is a complicated business. It requires one to answer these questions: Just who is this country for? And how did you arrive at such a conclusion?
The answers prove more expansive than Trump’s razor-thin understanding of them. In a press conference after one game on Sunday, Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin noted the false virtue in the president’s claims. “This is our country,” he said. “What we were founded on was protest.” Baldwin, like Kaepernick, is keenly aware of the inherent paradox in our definition of patriotism. “It has always been my understanding that the brave men and women who fought and died for our country did so to ensure that we could live in a fair and free society, which includes the right to speak out in protest,” Eric Reid wrote in The New York Times; the 49ers safety was the first teammate to kneel with Kaepernick.
So, who is this country for? I like to believe it’s for kids like Jordan Edwards, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, and Michael Brown. For people like Kalief Browder who are wrongfully funneled through the prison system. For women like Sandra Bland who are treated like monsters. For men like Eric Garner who are made into ghost stories before our very eyes.
Genuine patriotism bears no one hue, political ideology, or class. Understanding this, though, requires men like Trump to relinquish the old ways of reasoning and accept that the American flag and our national anthem, for all their metaphorical valor and pride, so rarely represent the interests of the marginalized. In August, when a coalition of 40 players sent a memo to league commissioner Roger Goodell asking for concrete support around issues such as police transparency and prison reform, they were doing so because they understood that hollow symbols don’t shield the constant threat to black lives.
When I said that patriotism was a complicated business, I meant it. It is a business. In 2015, it was reported that the Department of Defense spent tens of millions of dollars for acts of “paid patriotism” during sporting events, including NFL games. This consisted of “on-field color guard, enlistment and reenlistment ceremonies, performances of the national anthem, [and] full-field flag details.” The Monday night show of solidarity, which included even Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, seemed for all its pageantry like a piece of that same strategy: Jones looked straight into a broadcast camera at one point. “Great show of unity,” Goodell tweeted, which only made it feel even more like an empty promotional ad for the NFL: We Are Strong. We Are United. We Cannot Be Broken.
And then I wondered. Did Jones know who Ezell Ford was? Had Goodell heard how Rekia Boyd was hunted down? Did the league honestly believe in Colin Kaepernick’s cause, which really wasn’t his cause alone but all of ours? Were they aware that protest and patriotism are not mutually exclusive, but instead linked biographies in the American fight for justice? I wondered if they understood. I wondered if they knew that kneeling was only as courageous as the actions that followed it.
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