On June 5, he finally issued a statement saying the lives of Black people-a group that includes 70 percent of the NFL’s players, two of its 32 head coaches, and none of its team owners-matter. Soon, the NFL and just about every other major corporation in the United States had to do what Goodell never wanted: pick a side. In 2016, Kaepernick was villainized for protesting during the anthem in 2020, Drew Brees was villainized for saying he would “never agree with anybody” who protested in that way. Hundreds of American cities have held Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and kneeling has become one of the international symbols of the movement. The league seemed to think that it could ignore police brutality simply because it had “moved on” from Kaepernick, but police officers kept killing Black people. There was just one error with the NFL’s approach: Kaepernick was right. The NFL Will Never Lead, but It Can Be Made to Follow How Will the NFL React to a New Wave of Player Activism?
Kap’s supporters were convinced that he had been blackballed from the league, while President Donald Trump urged his base to stop watching NFL games and in 2017 called protesting players “sons of bitches.” Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke publicly about the importance of having “different viewpoints” while reportedly “ looking for a way for the protests to end.” Last December, Goodell told media that the league had “moved on” from Kaepernick. This inaction pissed just about everybody off. The NFL never suspended Kaepernick the quarterback simply never found his way onto a roster in 2017, 2018, or 2019. The league just wanted him to go away.Īnd so it took a course of inaction. But it also didn’t want him to be around anymore-that would anger the millions of people who felt Kaepernick’s peaceful protest of kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 was an attack on America. It didn’t want to act to get rid of him-that would anger the millions of people who believed in his fight against systemic racism and police brutality. The NFL wanted Colin Kaepernick to vanish.
0 kommentar(er)
