Kneel

What have you learned in the past four years?

The NFL returns Thursday night, four years removed from Colin Kaepernick’s first protest during the national anthem, with only a few knowns of how players will respond to the ongoing unrest sparked by police shootings, calls for “law and order,” and a divisive political landscape. What has the NFL learned in the last four years? We’ll see.

The issue about whether or not kneeling disrespects the flag or American servicemen and women should be settled. Professional athletes have clearly articulated the point of their protest over the last four years. The matter is whether or not the public has listened and learned. Even after four more years of videos capturing brutality, some like Drew Brees—at the height of protests for George Floyd’s killing—still tried to claim the patriotic high ground, like an Iwo Jima reenactor. Brees got his lip buttoned by everyone from teammate Malcolm Jenkins to Louisiana native and actor Wendell Pierce. Brees, to his credit, quickly apologized, promised to listen, learn, and made multi-million dollar charitable donations toward public health in Louisiana.

In SEC country, I imagine most of us have been surprised how things have shaken out, given…you know, history. There have been encouraging signs: The University of Tennessee athletes held a march for social justice, attended by the UT chancellor and president. An earlier event featured head football coach Jeremy Pruitt showing full support for his players. University of Alabama athletes, highlighted by the Crimson Tide football team, held a similar event, including head coach Nick Saban.

Even in Mississippi, where things move slowly (even by Southern standards), significant changes have come within the state, with athletic programs playing a central role. Ole Miss and Miss. State coaches Lane Kiffin and Mike Leach received some credit for lobbying Mississippi's legislature to change its state flag. But, in the same way that Bree Newsome took down South Carolina’s Confederate flag, not then-Governor Nikki Haley, I’m betting hundreds of Mississippi athletes realized their collective power and made the eventual change to Mississippi’s state flag possible. I’m betting those athletes let Kiffin and Leach know in a variety of ways just how their million-dollar bread is buttered.

I’ve been reading Andrew Maraniss’ wonderful book Strong Inside, a chronicle of Perry Wallace, the first African American basketball player in the SEC. Wallace led Pearl Cohn to a state championship on March 19, 1966, in the first integrated basketball state championship tournament in Tennessee. After the game, he watched Texas Western’s all-Black squad beat Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky Wildcats. Wallace chose Vanderbilt University to continue his education and playing career, understanding full-well that he would be a pioneer within the league. Maraniss details the national mood in the summer of 1966 before Wallace entered Vandy, nearly paralleling where we are now:

7/31/66 — In Chicago, a white mob of nearly 3000 people confronted and attacked a small, integrated protest who were marching for fair housing.

8/1 — In Austin, TX, Charles Whitman climbed to the top of UT’s Texas Tower and opened fired on students below, killing thirteen and wounding dozens more.

8/10 — IL congressman Roman Pucinski called on President Johnson to reach out to civil rights leaders to “restore law and order in America.”

8/18 — Alabama governor George Wallace urged the state legislature to resist federal school integration guidelines, calling the standards “a blueprint devised by Socialists” with the “100 percent, unqualified support of the Communist Party.”

8/22 — Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Roberto Clemente told sportswriters that Black and Hispanic stars are not treated with the same respect as their white counterparts. “I am an American citizen…but some people act like they think I live in a jungle someplace. To the people here we are outsiders, foreigners.”

8/23 — Cassius Clay, heavyweight champion of the world, appealed his 1-A draft status, holding his Koran in a Louisville courthouse.

9/7 — Ole Miss head football coach John Vaught admitted to reporters that he was half-heartedly recruiting Black players to “comply with some sort of act to get federal funds…. We have not found one good enough yet. By the time we find one good enough, I’ll be gone.”

9/8 — Stokely Carmichael is arrested in Atlanta.

9/14 — Perry Wallace arrives on Vanderbilt’s campus for freshman orientation.

Does any of this sound familiar? Have we learned anything in the last fifty-four years?

To paraphrase civil rights movement activist Ruby Sales, when people tell you where and how it hurts, listen. If you still believe athlete protests are about disrespecting the flag or the troops, you haven’t been listening.

A couple of weeks ago, Clippers coach Doc Rivers and New York Mets outfielder Dom Smith told us where it hurts. Rivers, the son of a cop, said during his press conference, “It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back.”

If you can’t bring yourself to watch the broad daylight murders of George Floyd or Ahmaud Arbery, then try giving 8:51 to Dom Smith's August 27 press conference. Smith, a Los Angeles native, is enjoying a breakout season, living up to his billing as a first round pick in the 2013 draft. A few weeks ago, Smith spontaneously knelt during the national anthem after the Jacob Blake shooting came to light. After the game, Smith articulated his grief in the clearest terms possible, tears streaming down his face for nearly seven minutes:

“I think the most difficult part is to see people still don’t care. For this to just continuously happen, it just shows the hate in people’s heart … and that just sucks, you know? Black men in America, it’s not easy, so like I said, I wasn’t there[mentally] today, but I’ll bounce back, I’ll be fine.”

If you cannot bring yourself to listen to Dom Smith—and I know from experience that some people just will not receive anything unless it is said by a white man—then consider ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit say nearly the same thing in this clip.

The “shut up and dribble” crowd routinely denies the humanity of the people that entertain them, or in some cases, create the entire reason for their platform and paycheck. “Shut up and dribble” was never a complaint; it was always a command. The supposedly aggrieved, who sense their sovereignty over space and airwaves diminishing, are left with little more than venting their spleen. It’s the shuttering of empathy for the sake of getting on with life as usual, or making a few bucks.

Thankfully, the ground is shrinking beneath the doubters—shrinking to approximately the space that fits beneath one knee firmly planted in the grass.

Photo Credit: New York Mets appearing in Newsday