Ben Gregson
Section Editor
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. 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 getting paid leave and getting away with murder,” Colin Kaepernick said in August 2016.
At the time, Kaepernick was a quarterback for the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers who knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality. After the 2016 season, he was released from his contract and was not picked up by any of the other 31 teams in the league.
Four years later, the United States finds itself at the height of a racially-motivated divide over the same police brutality against people of color. Following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, as well as the murder of Ahmaud Aubrey, nationwide outcry and protests sparked in May. The following month, sports leagues across the nation began to restart, and the players and teams of these leagues did not ignore what was happening outside their stadiums.
In Major League Soccer, every referee and player donned “Black Lives Matter” tops and knelt before every game. Notably, United States men’s national team captain Michael Bradley did not kneel before the games.
“The conversation and the rhetoric that has been created around the decision for people to peacefully protest by kneeling, it’s designed by the people that don’t want change, to take away from the real conversation that we all need to be having every single day,” Bradley said.
The MLS was not the only league to pay homage to the Black Lives Matter movement. Major League Baseball changed their logo to read “BLM” instead of “MLB,” the National Hockey League displayed “END RACISM” on every jumbotron and the National Basketball Association’s season was nearly forfeit in protest.
All of these leagues and players have received both tremendous support and negative feedback for these actions. During the opening game of the NFL season in September, Kansas City Chiefs fans booed the Houston Texans, and their own players, through a moment of silence dedicated to the ongoing issue.
“I wish these guys would just play the game. I understand the movement but I wish sports were separate from politics,” one Dyersburg High School student said.
Three months after protests first started, the support for Black Lives Matter and the conversation about social injustice against people of color has not stopped. Whether or not lasting change results from these actions, it is clear these athletes’ voices will be heard.
“Believe in something,” Kaepernick said in a now-viral 2018 Nike advertisement, “Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
Photos courtesy people.com and sports.yahoo.com
Former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick protested police brutality throughout the 2016 season. He did not return for the 2017 season.
Black Players for Change is an MLS player organization dedicated to social justice for people of color. It organized protests and states on behalf of MLS players.
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