Colin Kaepernick pays price of standing up for

justice

Outspoken quarterback Colin Kaepernick has been bypassed by inferior players in

Trumps America.Jasen VinloveUSA TODAY Sports

Michael F. Brown-11 August 2017

All-Pro Seattle Seahawk cornerback Richard Sherman is right. National Football

League (NFL) owners are telling Colin Kaepernick, Boy, stay in your place.

Kaepernick is the outspoken backer of the Black Lives Matter movement who sat
and then knelt during the national anthem last year and cannot find a job for the
2017 season.
And the term boy, used by white segregationists in the American South to
denigrate and belittle Black men, is no overstatement.

Team owners oversee a violent league with intense play that frequently
inflicts life-long brain injuries on players.

NFL players, nearly 70 percent of them African American, are used by team
owners and then discarded like unwanted property often with broken bodies
and minds after less than three years on average.

Reluctantly, the league has agreed to a $1 billion settlement that could pay off the
most injured players with as much as $5 million for a tortured deterioration into
dementia and suicidal depression.
Similarly, returning US troops face inadequate and inappropriate treatment for
depression, suicide risk and post-traumatic stress disorder, but white fans who
roar that Kaepernick is disrespecting the troops appear to have far less to say
about the wars and their consequences for US military forces, let alone for
civilians in the invaded countries.

No doubt players and fans love the game, but questions are fast emerging in the
minds of both about the wisdom of involvement in the sport and the morals of
cheering as minds and bodies are destroyed.

The treatment of Kaepernick is apt to concentrate the minds of more players on

the relative risks and rewards of football and how willing owners are to abuse
players bodies while discounting the substance of their views.

A year ago, Kaepernick, then playing with the San Francisco 49ers, dared to
protest during the national anthem, telling a journalist with NFL Media his views
on police violence: I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a
country that oppresses Black people and people of color.
He added, To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part
to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people [police] getting
paid leave and getting away with murder.
Should the regular season begin on 7 September with Kaepernick still unsigned,
player leaders will have important decisions to make about how to proceed.

Questions to the NFL Players Association from The Electronic Intifada about
Kaepernicks case went unanswered.

Cowards
Seahawk defensive end Michael Bennett, who this offseason said he would not
be used by the Israeli government in a planned propaganda trip to
Israel, argued that Kaepernicks treatment shows the racial divide in the league.
He added, Racism is the biggest issue in America.

Malcolm Jenkins, a safety with the Philadelphia Eagles who stood with fist raised
during the national anthem last season, called the NFL teams cowards.

Jenkins dismissed the argument that Kaepernick is no longer good enough to play
in the NFL. I think its safe to throw out that talent argument, and basically focus
on the fact that he doesnt have a job solely because he didnt stand for the
anthem last year, even though he already expressed that he planned on standing
this year.

Kaepernick opted out of his contract with the 49ers in March, but has found no
team willing to sign him to a new contract.

Racism in the NFL

Meanwhile, teams have signed inferior quarterbacks, supercharging concerns of
bias and even possible collusion.

Serious questions are being put to the Baltimore Ravens and Miami Dolphins
following injuries to their starting quarterbacks. Baltimore, of course, has been
much in the news of late on account of the sort of police misconduct Kaepernick
has highlighted.
And some fans of the Dolphins along with Florida-based sports pundits
have criticized Kaepernick over his views of Fidel Castro after the quarterback
praised Cubas investments in promoting literacy and universal healthcare, as
opposed to incarceration, as well as Cubas support for the fight against apartheid
in South Africa.

The Dolphins chose to replace their injured quarterback with Jay Cutler who is
widely regarded as a weaker quarterback than Kaepernick, albeit one who
previously played for the Chicago Bears offensive coordinator Adam Gase, who is
now the Dolphins head coach.

Cutlers politics, in contrast to Kaepernicks, have proven to be no obstacle. Im

happy with the results, Cutler said after last Novembers election. Ive
supported Trump for a while. Im not going to dive into it. I know its a sensitive
issue. I like where its going.

These are telling and prescient remarks from a white quarterback who would
come out of retirement the following year to secure a one-year contract worth
$10 million in a hateful political climate nurtured by a president who has
repeatedly given nods to white supremacists and has bad-mouthed Kaepernick.

But white supremacy is increasingly normalized in todays politics; a quarterback

speaking out against racial injustice is perceived as a danger by too many NFL
owners.

Of course, it is not recalling ancient history to remember that this is a league that
long stuck with white quarterbacks over African Americans. Black players were
kept in what The New York Times Michael Powell termed apartheid positions.
Seventy percent of the players in the NFL today are African American yet
discrimination remains a reality when one looks at the quarterback position and
coaching ranks.

Sending a message
Team owners who are almost exclusively white are also sending a message to
other players to be very cautious about speaking up about police abuses and
other issues not in line with the perceived sensitivities of white fans.

Even if Kaepernick finally gets offered a contract this summer, the message has
been delivered to athletes: keep your mouths shut on social justice issues,
particularly when the national anthem is being played.

Kaepernick is best known for his support of Black Lives Matter, but has wide-
ranging social justice interests. For example, earlier this year he retweeted
a message critical of Israeli apartheid.

Though on a San Francisco team that struggled mightily throughout last season
which likely contributes to undercutting Kaepernicks perceived value the
quarterbacks off-the-field work was enthusiastically received in many
communities.

As law professor Khaled Beydoun noted, Kaepernick held know your rights
camps for youth, pledged $1 million of his own money to nonprofits working
against oppression and helped fight famine in Somalia.

Yet so far, many fans calling sports radio and writing letters to the editor have
indicated they would rather field a quiescent team and lose than one calling for
equality and win.

Racial attitudes had a notable relationship to white opposition to athletes

protests, Tatishe M. Nteta, Brian Schaffner and Matthew C.
MacWilliams wrote in The Washington Post in April.

The three political scientists said their polling demonstrates a strong relationship
between holding negative stereotypes of Blacks and strong opposition to the
protests.

Powerful tradition
Kaepernicks calls for social justice and against police misconduct follow in the
powerful tradition of athletes addressing important issues of the time. These
protests have been fitful because of the powerful backlash they face.

Muhammad Ali, whose image can be seen emblazoned from time to time on a
Kaepernick T-shirt, was one of the most famous of these protesters and paid a
heavy price. Ali, a conscientious objector, was first stripped of his heavyweight
title and then fined $10,000, banned from boxing for three years and sentenced
to up to five years behind bars. He managed through appeal to stay out of prison.
View image on Twitter

Follow

Colin Kaepernick

@Kaepernick7
Great to see my Brother @JColeNC I appreciate you not just talking about helping
the people, but actually going out and doing the work!
4:53 PM - Aug 7, 2017
Alis words from the time, however, live on: I aint got no quarrel with them Viet
Cong. A supporter of Palestinian rights, Ali first debilitated by Parkinsons
disease and now just a vibrant memory is currently heralded by mainstream
media that spoke against him half a century ago.
Eminent sociologist Harry Edwards, who advised Kaepernick last season, said in
May: Ali created a conversation.

He added: when the world champion steps forward and says, No Viet Cong ever
called me a (expletive), and we have some issue we need to deal with here, not
over there in a war that make no sense, it moved the discussion to another
level.

According to Edwards, Kaepernick similarly sparked a national conversation

about race.

Trump takes credit

For all the talk of the American meritocracy, there is seeming satisfaction in
Trumps America with whiteballing a superior athlete on account of his upholding
the rights of African Americans and other people of color.

Even the president has not been silent on the case. Apparently peeved that
Kaepernick dared to call the Republican presidential candidate openly racist at
the time, Kaepernick also criticized Democratic presidential candidate Hillary
Clinton for her racially
charged superpredator comment Trump told a radio program that perhaps
Kaepernick should find a country that works better for him.

As president, Trump also played to the crowd by indicating NFL owners were
afraid to sign Kaepernick lest they be on the receiving end of a Trump tweet.

It was reported that NFL owners dont want to pick him up because they dont
want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump. Do you believe that? As the
crowds roars of approval subside, Trump exults, I just saw that. I just saw that.
Trump has not lacked for support from NFL owners. Team owners Dan Snyder of
the openly racist Washington Redskins, Stan Kroenke, Bob McNair and Shahid
Kahn all contributed $1 million for inauguration festivities. So, too, did Robert
Kraft who has been active in promoting propaganda trips to Israel by current and
former NFL players.

Trump-connected Woody Johnson, owner of the Jets, for his part signed a weaker
option in Josh McCown to play quarterback for his lackluster
team. According to The New York Times, the team owner opined that he did not
think much of Kaepernicks protest. Notably, Johnson will be the next US
ambassador to the UK.

Writing in the The Hollywood Reporter, retired basketball superstar and former US
global cultural ambassador Kareem Abdul-Jabbar raised concerns about the
political leanings of NFL owners as a factor in Kaepernicks situation: Perhaps a
contributing factor is that the NFL owners tend to contribute more money to
Republican political campaigns and therefore have more of a philosophical
interest in not wanting to hear the players messages about social injustice.

The owners undoubtedly have a friend in Trump. Not only does the president
extol the virtues of getting rough with people detained by police, but he scoffs at
football concussions as a little ding on the head that should not stop players
who are supposed to be tough.

He is moreover surrounded by advisers who engage in racism and

are dismissive of social justice concerns.

Next steps
It remains to be seen whether we have reached a tipping point for players
concerned not just about brain injuries, but their right to speak freely.

Will players such as Kaepernick, Martellus and Michael Bennett, and Malcolm
Jenkins continue to speak outand find more teammates to support them or will
the retaliation against Kaepernick have a chilling effect?

Edwards, the sociologist who advised Kaepernick, says, If they are stupid enough
to make a martyr out of Kaep, its going to get even more interesting.

Civil rights groups and filmmaker Spike Lee have announced a rally outside NFL
headquarters in New York on 23 August in support of racial justice and free
speech.

An online petition to boycott NFL games until Kaepernick is signed to a contract

has already garnered over 150,000 signatures and is growing quickly.
Posted by Thavam