The Backlash Begins

An excerpt from Rolling Stone - (bold is mine)

What Colin Kaepernick's National Anthem Protest Tells Us About America
When black athletes choose to point their aggression towards larger, systematic inequalities, there's always backlash  By Morgan Jerkins

While black men only make up six percent of the American population, they comprise a staggering seventy percent of NFL rosters. However, their power is mainly found on the field, since there are currently no African-Americans who are a majority owner of any team and no African-American CEOs or Presidents. The majority of NFL players are black, while the NFL fan base is 83 percent white and 64 percent male. These are people who pay staggering amounts of money to watch black men who have their bodies battered on the field. As long as they run and tackle, keep their helmets on, and their mouths shut, then they are acceptable to the white mainstream public. However, when black athletes choose to point their aggression not towards each other but to larger, systematic inequalities, that's when the backlash begins.

White 49ers fans posted videos burning Kaepernick's jersey and actor Chris Meloni took to Twitter to criticize Kaepernick’s method of political protest, because, as the Law & Order: SVU star saw it, the quarterback was disrespecting the American flag (Meloni later deleted the tweet). People swarmed social media, calling Kaepernick a disgrace, that he was a privileged rich athlete, that he was equally arrogant and ignorant to the sacrifices of American soldiers. And it all had a familiar ring to it.

This outcry is reminiscent of Muhammad Ali's political activism when he refused to enlist in the Vietnam War in 1967. David Susskind, an American television host, said, "I find nothing amusing or interesting or tolerable about this man. He's a disgrace to his country, his race, and what he laughingly describes as his profession." The man that today we call "The Greatest" was ridiculed all across the country and media. "My conscience won't let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America," he said. "And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what?" What Kaepernick and Ali as black athletes unleash through their political activism is a rupture in what is expected of them and how their allegiance to this country has never been rightfully earned.

Toni Morrison once said, "In this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate." Kaepernick's protest, just as Ali's refusal to participate in the Vietnam War, tapped into an entrenched, historical fear of race in this country, that blackness is by default anti-American.

http://www.rollingstone.com/sports/colin-kaepernicks-national-anthem-protest-w436704?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=082916_12