COMMENTARY
COMMENTARY
10 YEARS AGO, COLIN
KAEPERNICK TOOK A STAND,
BY TAKING A KNEE. WHO STANDS WITH
HIM TODAY?
Police officer on the street in New York City Credit Elric Chapelon / stock. adobe. com
By JASON JOHNSON
From the 19th century abolitionists to Martin Luther King and even President Barack Obama, Black leaders have constantly reminded Black America that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, even if we sometimes have to pull, tug and jump on it, to bend it in the right direction.
No one in 1853 when abolitionist Theodore Parker first uttered the phrase, or in 1965 when Martin Luther King powerfully paraphrased it during his speech on the steps of the Alabama Capitol following the Selma-to-Montgomery march, should not acknowledge that America became a better place in the wake of those great moments.
However, when I think of the day – September 1, 2016 – when San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt in silent protest of police violence against Blacks, I realized that he too was trying to bend the moral arc towards justice. But unlike in times past, that arc didn’ t bend towards justice, it snapped back, in the opposite direction, towards oppression, violence, and silent complicity.
In fact, from the playing fields of the National Football League( on one of which his protest was staged), to the newsrooms of American journalism, and even the haunts of African American celebrity culture, we are objectively in worse shape today than we were when Kaepernick refused to stand for the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner.
But if we are reflective enough as a community, we can take lessons from what happened in the decade that followed Kaepernick’ s protest, so that the arc of justice doesn’ t snap back even further.
Kaepernick wasn’ t out to save the world when he knelt during the playing of the national anthem. But after the police killings of Tamir Rice, Philando Castille, Alton Sterling and the other Blacks whose deaths have been lost to the morgue of America’ s racial history, he chose to take a stand, by taking a knee.
The impact on the NFL was significant and noticeable. Owners pitched fits and threatened players publicly and
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement( ICE) officer and a black German Shepherd conduct surveillance Credit: Vladislav / stock. adobe. com continued on next page
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