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Kaepernick and the Movement He Inspired

I once thought the protests of athletes after George Floyd murder would launch a new era of sports activism. Ten years after Kaepernick first kneeled, I revisit what I wrote.

Next week, I will publish a piece on the 10 years since Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the national anthem. But before that drops I wanted to share an adapted introduction to my 2021 book The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee Changing the World. I still stand by most of my analysis, but I was wrong to think that the 2020 protests of athletes following the police murder of George Floyd would launch a new era of activism in sports. For both athletes and the broader resistance movements, the protests that summer were not a jumping-off point—they were a capstone. My next piece is going to examine why so much promise came to an end—but also why it could quickly start again. Natasha Cloud’s facing down that ant-trans jackass and former NBA player Enes Kanter is just one recent exhibit of a person of uncommon courage proclaiming dissent on the field of play in the face of a whirlwind of prejudice. Please read this before you read part two.

When Colin Kaepernick’s knee hit the ground during the national anthem in August 2016, a debate was launched about police violence, patriotism, racism, and the history of the anthem itself. Through his actions, Kaepernick had also forged a link with both the Black Lives Matter movement and an often-buried history of radical athletes: people like Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and Billie Jean King.

Kaepernick’s actions also provoked something deep, ugly, and primordial in the (white) American consciousness. They prompted a violent and highly racialized rage among a self-branded “alt-right” of fascists being marshaled together to support the 2016 candidacy of Donald Trump. The unrepentantly divisive and proudly bigoted Trump said on the campaign trail that Kaepernick “maybe should find another country to live in.” This comment, with its “Go Back to Africa” overtones, provoked a deluge of death threats leveled at Kaepernick in city after city during the 2016 season. Even with all that, Kaepernick was moved into the starting lineup and with the world breathing down his neck had a remarkable year, throwing for 16 touchdowns and just four interceptions, while leading the NFL in yards per carry. Then came Kaepernick’s exile. A league that accepts players—and owners—who have abused women, driven under the influence of alcohol, and even killed people could not stand the thought of having an avowed antiracist among “their” players, even one........

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