After doing a little self analysis, I’ve come to realize that my initial reaction to all the kneeling during the anthem was based more in personal reasons that seemed valid to me but deep down, something else was gnawing at me that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
My visceral reaction was based mostly on the obvious disrespect being shown to both our country and our men and women who have served and still do. As a veteran, I take that kind of thing much more seriously than the average American might in some cases. I let my heart take the lead in my disgust for this display and I can see now that this might not look rational to some people.
I finally got to the heart of my problems with protesting the anthem yesterday when I posted this,
“Protesting police brutality at a football game is a bit like protesting abortion at a grocery store.
The message might be valid but the choice of venue is just stupid.
And you kind of look like an asshole doing it.”
That bounced around in my mind for a while and the whole thing crystallized for me. I also saw someone compare this to the struggle of Rosa Parks and that’s when it hit me full.
It’s the venue being used that bothers me but more than that, it’s the person at the center of the protest that bothers me more.
Rosa Parks chose both the moment and the stage for her protest based on the ill treatment she had faced her entire life because of the racism and segregation she had been born into.
Colin Kaepernick has not dealt with even a miniscule amount of the prejudice and hatred that Parks had. From the moment he first held a football, he had been groomed to be a star by coaches and his family. He has been given every opportunity to succeed despite his ethnicity and background. That’s not to say that he’s never experienced the sting of racism but it goes without saying that he has never been disallowed to sit where he wants on a bus or at a lunch counter.
This is what I believe many viewers to his protest may feel outwardly and why they might find it so distasteful.
Put simply, how can a man who has never known oppression suddenly be so moved to protest something he’s never personally experienced?
Prominent figures like Parks, MLK and Gandhi stood up to very real oppression and hatred to effect change in the brutal reality of the times they lived in and the mere fact of mentioning Kaepernick in the same breath as these titans of social justice, I feel, cheapens their memory and does a gross disservice to their individual struggles.
They chose to stand against unfair treatment by society at a time when that treatment was being directed at them personally.
Not so with Colin. He chose to stand against unfair treatment that he’s never known.
That’s not to say that when injustice exists we shouldn’t all stand against it. This is fundamentally why his protest seems more like a spoiled child's tantrum.
His protest also fails because of his choice of venue. MLK used the reality of racism as the impetus for his movement but he created his own stage for it. He stood alone at first and worked tirelessly to grow the movement that would eventually motivate and define his whole life just as Gandhi did.
Kaepernick is using a stage that other people have paid for literally. The very people who celebrate his talent also pay for the stadiums in which he plays and to use them as the stage for his protest is both cowardly and lazy.
He is essentially “raising awareness” by using a social medium as his vehicle, a practice made popular by Facebook in particular and one which I also find lazy and cowardly. Raising awareness has quickly replaced actually doing anything concrete to effect positive change in society. It’s become a way to feel better about yourself without actually getting your hands dirty.
If Kaepernick truly felt so strongly about the cause, he could have joined many of the national movements dedicated to highlighting police brutality in the black community. Those groups, while not entirely pure in either their motives or the basis for their outrage, have at least forged a path on their own merits.
While many people may not precisely realize it, I suspect they too take issue with his choice of venue for his outrage. While the outrage about police brutality and the hew and cry about unfair treatment of minorities don’t square with the facts and the actual numbers, the agenda is pushed almost nightly in the media and from politicians and celebrities alike. The fact that the movement sprang from the death of Michael Brown, a criminal who attacked a policeman and attempted to take his weapon away from him, puts the movement on shaky ground at the outset. The “gentle giant” as he was portrayed every night on the news was in fact the same person who had just robbed a convenience store only minutes before his run in with the law. The now famous but wholly inaccurate meme of “Hands up, Don’t shoot” proved to be a complete fabrication but that didn’t change the minds of those who held him up as some sort of sainted martyr above reproach for his actual crimes.
This is the movement Kaepernick has attached himself to and by virtue of his choice of venue he has attached the NFL to it as well.
His choice to use the NFL as his chosen vehicle is the coward’s way out to promote a false narrative and when you add those two facts together, we begin to see why this protest was doomed to failure from the start. The country, for the most part, is already weary of the violence and mayhem surrounding the BLM movement. A majority of Americans find advocating or dismissing the murder of police to be reprehensible and counterproductive to addressing a problem that many see as manufactured by the media or taken completely out of context by those who promote it.
This is the great failing of Kaepernick’s protest. He’s chosen to protest something that many Americans believe is untrue. He’s also chosen to use a platform that he had no hand in erecting to it’s potential demise if the ratings and public outrage are any indication.
He brought his political statement to an entity that had been a safe haven from politics by the millions of viewers that have kept it alive and vibrant for so long.
I am one of those people. I turned to football because it was the last part of my life that would be free from politics. Now, ESPN has turned into MSNBC for their incessant attempts to foist the political views of the people who work there upon people who turn to them for entertainment.
I watch football for the exemplification of excellence and personal effort that it represents, not to be either preached to about social issues or the exorcism of personal demons by any player or individual associated with the NFL.
For the same reason that I turned away from broadcast television, I find myself turning away from the NFL. The constant belittling of my beliefs and the never ending social commentary that is counter to those beliefs.
To borrow a quote from Ronald Reagan and alter it ever so slightly to fit the times, “I didn’t leave the NFL, they left me.”
