The president’s feud with the NFL has gained worldwide attention for over a week. It is thus far the longest amount of time we’ve talked about one of his controversies before a new one has overshadowed it. He has demanded that players who kneel during the anthem be fired for disrespecting our flag and our troops and called them “sons of b****es.” And a lot of the country agrees with him. The public have weighed in on the protests, and a large portion think that the protesters are a bunch of entitled babies who for some reason want to be oppressed.
However, these people are all extremely offbase and incorrect. Kaepernick and the rest of the NFL protesters aren’t protesting the flag, the troops, or America. In fact, Kaepernick has even stated exactly what he was kneeling for: police brutality and the targeting of African Americans by law enforcement. Eric Reid, Kaepernick’s former teammate and fellow protester, said in an explanatory article in the New York Times that “It should go without saying that I love my country and I’m proud to be an American. But, to quote James Baldwin, ‘exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.’” This protest isn’t an effort to spread anti-America sentiments to the public; it’s a call to attention of a real, valid issue in our country that needs to be dealt with immediately.
If this were an anti-America protest, Kaepernick and Reid wouldn’t have taken the time to meet with a retired Green Beret about what was best to do out of respect to the people who die for our rights and freedoms, including the freedom to protest. They wouldn’t have then decided to kneel instead of sit, which is a more respectful gesture to the troops that still acknowledges the fact that they are peacefully protesting. On the contrary to what some may believe, this protest shows the opposite of anti-Americanism: these men care about this country so much that they’re taking action to help solve its issues because they know it can do better.
Many supporters of this protest have compared the anthem-kneeling to marchers in the streets and Rosa Parks on the bus. They say that if we are able to realize that marchers aren’t protesting the streets, and Parks wasn’t protesting public transportation, but rather the situations are simply a conduit for the protesters to get their message across, we should be able to realize that the same goes for the “national anthem protest.”
Additionally, people have brought up the fact that these men make a very large amount of money for what they do. They say that because of this these men experience no oppression, are not affected by this issue, and therefore just want to be ungrateful to the country that let them become so rich, famous and successful. However, money and fame have nothing to do with racism; on September 6 Michael Bennett, a player for the Seattle Seahawks, posted an open letter in which he described his own experience with police brutality and racism from the police force. He told the public how he, a famous and successful NFL player, was singled out from a large crowd of people, beaten up, threatened with guns and cursed at, and then taken into a police car for no other reason than the fact that he was black. This occurred after a loud sound went off that many thought was a gunshot, sending an entire crowd of people running. Bennett did absolutely nothing to make these officers think that he had done anything wrong and reacted the same exact way as everybody else, yet he was the one assumed as the possible suspect responsible for the ‘gunshot’ and was taken down with excessive force and pointed at with multiple guns.
Bennett’s experience shows that no matter who you are, if you are black in America, you are not safe with officers of the organization whose very duty is supposed to be protecting you as an American citizen. Racism does not see class, salary, or fame; it sees only the color of one’s skin. And even if being a rich and famous athlete did make people exempt from racism, that does not mean there is no reason to protest. The group that would be the only ones affected in this situation are still being killed, and as a rich and famous athlete, one can and should use their platform to spread awareness about the issue and start a conversation about it.
Another counterargument against Kaepernick and other protesters is that they are bringing awareness to an issue that does not exist because statistically, police kill more white people than black people. And this is factually true; according to a study by the Washington Post, as of July 10, 2016, there had been 1,502 fatal shootings by on-duty police officers in the country since January 1, 2015. 732 of those killed were white and 381 were black. Looking at the straight numbers, something seems off. If this many less black people are killed than white people, then why do groups such as Black Lives Matter exist? What are all the protests for?
What people who make this argument seem to be unaware of is the large difference in population between the two races. According to the Post, white people make up about 62% of the US population. This is around 160 million more people than the national population of black people, who make up just 13% of the country. However, when it comes to fatal shootings by police, 49% of those killed are white and 24% are black. This makes African Americans two and a half times more likely than white Americans to be shot and killed by a cop.
The Post goes on to state that in this same study, it was found that the same amount of unarmed white people and unarmed black people were killed from Jan. 1 to June 10: 50 each. However, since there are so many more white people than black people in America, five times more to be specific, that means that unarmed black people are five times more likely than unarmed white people to shot and killed by a cop.
With all of this data and even more recorded, one cannot say that there isn’t a bias towards African Americans by the police that makes them more vulnerable to violence. Police brutality is a problem in this country, and many people do not want to talk about it. But if we really want to become the “post-racial” society we have claimed to be then we need to have these conversations and figure out how to stop these trends. Those who want change need to keep bringing attention to the issues that matter, and that’s exactly what Colin Kaepernick and every other NFL player who has knelt for the anthem are doing.