These are trying times for our country. Call it political tensions if you’d like, but major regressive shifts seem to be occurring that couldn’t have been thought possible for the year 2017. If you ask black or brown folks, none of this comes as a surprise. Police brutality, systemic racism, inequality are all weighty words that can seem scurried through in academic debates or news coverage. These words are not headlines to people of color; these are their realities. They cannot simply turn their backs on these issues; they have to live through them everyday.
Racial tension seems an inadequate phrase for the real fear people of color face in this country, the fear of being found guilty and murdered simply because of the skin they were born in. The scrutiny of their conversations and their protests clearly shows the issue here. Protesting has always been a powerful tool for people and the misinformation about where it stems from and the importance of why they are doing it shows how race is treated in this country. People of color are fighting for their livelihoods through protest and the fact that they still need to do that is what should truly make people uncomfortable.
Colin Kapernick’s story has been dissected and misconstrued in so many ways. His initial quiet decision to sit on the bench during the national anthem wasn’t loud enough for the media to pay any attention too. It wasn’t until he decided to take a knee that the power of that image drew him support and criticism. San Francisco 49ers safety Eric Reid wrote a beautiful op-ed for the New York Times explaining his decision to kneel with his colleague. One where he expressed over and over again that taking a knee was done so with the upmost respect for the country. A country that has never respected him, the sadness of that fact cannot be escaped. “We chose to kneel because it’s a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy.”
Kapernick’s decision to take a knee during the national anthem at his games was a call to end state sponsored brutality against black men and women, to acknowledge and call out that these systems are filled with racism. That until racism is actually addressed, this country will not be the place of freedom it claims to be. Kapernick’s protest on the field, a platform on which he could reach millions of people, was one where he kneeled alone for the cause, for the most part. The revival of his protest by teams across the country this week, which was sparked even further by the president’s insults toward the players who in his eyes “disrespected” the country and the flag by kneeling, quickly became the complete opposite of what it originally intended to be. What Kapernick once symbolized for communities of color with taking a knee has now been absorbed and rebranded by the NFL (one that has yet to give Kapernick a job again, by the way) as a corporation united, a whitewashing of its true meaning.
Taking a knee is a peaceful demonstration of protest against racism that has taken the lives of so many people. It is a symbol of protest against a system that has continued to support injustice and inequality. In taking that meaning away, it takes away another chance for people of color to speak out on their experiences.