Looking at the support Colin Kaepernick has received from the sports world, the leagues, and his fans, it is clear that many people agree with his protest. Most of the backlash he has faced has to do with how he is protesting. Meanwhile, others may not agree with his protest because he is an athlete, and as such he should stick to sports and entertaining his fans. There is a part of our society that will never accept that sports is more than just entertainment. For many fans, sports is a means of escape. They escape the routine of their daily life by going to a game, or watching sports on TV. They do not want to have socioeconomic or political discussions that affect them on a daily basis enter the sports arena.
We will never change everyone, but I believe we can educate society about the role that athletes have played and can play in implementing change. Then I think slowly the notion of sports solely as entertainment will change. However, change does not happen without discomfort. It is the discomfort of protest that makes it newsworthy. It is this discomfort that creates a discourse and enables people with differing points of view to come together to discuss it and hopefully create change, or at the very least shine a light on the issues we are passionate about, that we think are unjust. It is precisely this feeling of discomfort that made me certain I had to do something about my incident with the police. When I look at the incidents of police misconduct or of unarmed men being shot and killed by law enforcement, in only the last few years, it makes me uncomfortable.
Despite repeated, often videotaped instances of violence against black Americans by people sworn to protect them, it is disturbingly apparent that few outside the black community want to accept what seems unquestionable: African Americans are disproportionately targeted due to systematic and institutionalized biases within the government and the police force. These biases often cost black Americans their lives. Yet America still questions the necessity of the Black Lives Matter movement. Somehow America still ponders—despite incident after incident—why there is so much distrust and public outrage at the daily injustices that occur, disproportionally, to people of color.
The thirteen-month US Justice Department investigation into the Chicago Police Department, conducted in January 2017, pointed to “a police department with a legacy of corruption and abuse.” The inquiry comes “as the department grapples with skyrocketing violence in Chicago, where murders are at a 20-year high, and a deep lack of trust among the city’s residents.” The 161-page investigation then laid out a list of unchecked aggressions: “an officer pointing a gun at teenagers on bicycles suspected of trespassing; officers using a Taser on an unarmed, naked 65-year-old woman with mental illness; officers purposely dropping off young gang members in rival territory.” The report found that officers often used excessive force against minorities and that their actions were “practically condoned by supervisors, who rarely questioned their actions.”1
This investigation is only the latest conducted by the Justice Department into the police departments of Chicago and Baltimore, which have been besieged by violence and tension between the police and the public. In August 2016, the New York Times described an earlier Justice Department report, which found that “the Baltimore Police Department for years has hounded black residents who make up most of the city’s population, systematically stopping, searching and arresting them, often with little provocation or rationale.” The article that followed laid out a list of mostly unarmed black men and women (such as Sandra Bland) who were killed by the police either on the street or died while they were in police custody.
According to the Times, “investigations examined a slew of potentially unconstitutional practices, including excessive force and discriminatory traffic stops within the Baltimore Police Department. Among them: Black residents account for roughly eighty-four percent of stops, though they represent just sixty-three percent of the city’s population.”
“In one telling anecdote from the report,” the Times article continued, “a [Baltimore Police Department] shift commander provided officers with boilerplate language on how to write up trespassing arrest reports of people found near housing projects. The template contained an automatic description of the arrestee: ‘A BLACK MALE.’”
Because of social media and our twenty-four-hour news cycle, we are all too familiar with many of the victims. Within the last three years there has been an alarming number of African Americans killed at the hands of law enforcement. Perhaps the most shocking is the one that started the Black Lives Matter movement: the chokehold death of Eric Garner in 2014 in Staten Island. Garner was approached by police for selling loose cigarettes. When he told police that he was tired of being harassed, the officers went to arrest him. While he was being restrained by four police officers, Garner repeated “I can’t breathe” eleven times while lying facedown on the sidewalk until he lost consciousness. Garner died an hour later at the hospital. The incident was filmed, and the video shared around the world for weeks. The subsequent outrage incited public rallies and riots. By December 2014, there were at least fifty nationwide protests against police brutality. In July 2015, an out-of-court settlement was reached. The City of New York would pay $5.9 million to Garner’s family.
In Baltimore in 2015, Freddie Gray was arrested for possessing what the police alleged was an illegal switchblade. While being taken to the police station, Gray was found with his neck broken, still handcuffed and shackled in the police van. Gray’s death threw Baltimore into turmoil and incited large protests and the worst riots the city had seen in decades. Despite the public outcry, prosecutors dropped the remaining charges and all convictions against Baltimore police officers in Gray’s death.
Philando Castile’s death on July 6, 2016, is perhaps the most harrowing. Castile was fatally shot by a Minnesota police officer, after being pulled over in Falcon Heights. Castile was driving with his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds. After being asked for his license and registration, Castile told the officer he was licensed to carry a weapon and had one in the car. The officer told him not to move. As Castile was putting his hands back up, the officer shot him four times.
During the incident, Reynolds streamed a live video on Facebook. It shows Castile bleeding and dying. Her four-year-old daughter was in the car during the encounter. This incident followed another police shooting incident that same week in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, involving another black man, Alton Sterling. Sterling was tackled by police officers outside a store for selling CDs. He was then shot seven times and killed as two cops held him down on the ground. His death was also recorded, and the video was shared around the world via social media. News of his death incited protests and deadly police ambushes in Dallas and Baton Rouge.
On September 16, 2016, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Terence Crutcher was on his way home when his car stalled. The police arrived shortly after responding to a call about a vehicle blocking traffic. Crutcher is captured on video walking toward his disabled vehicle with his hands raised, while Officer Betty Jo Shelby follows with her gun drawn. Moments after Crutcher reaches his vehicle, Officer Shelby fires her gun and kills him. While Crutcher is seen walking toward his car with his hands up, an officer remarks “this looks like a bad guy,” but Crutcher, who was unarmed, had not committed any crime, resisted in any way, or given any indication that the officers had anything to fear from him. Aside from the fact that he was a large black man. The incident was also recorded and posted worldwide on social media. The shooting led to riots in Tulsa.
The Times article states, “The Supreme Court has given police officers wide latitude in how they can use deadly force, which makes prosecuting them difficult, even in the killing of unarmed people. For the Justice Department to charge an officer with a federal crime, the bar is even higher. Prosecutors must show that the officer willfully violated someone’s civil rights. State and federal investigators cleared the officer who killed twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland. Rice was playing with a plastic BB gun in the park when he was shot and killed by police.”
I can come up with no other explanation when I look at these incidents, and the ensuing “blistering” Justice Department reports, than they happen in part because of discriminatory practices and implicit bias (why else would officers react negatively to Crutcher on sight?), and also because of a lack of training and sensitivity on the part of police officers in certain communities.
Before all the video accounts of these tragic deaths, America was starting to think that discrimination had gone away, that it was no longer an issue. It is 2014, people thought, and we have a two-term black president. We are living in a “postracial” America; these types of things do not happen anymore. Then video after video started surfacing of police shootings of African American men, many literally running away, yet still getting shot. The public outcry was that it is getting worse. But the reality is, it is not getting worse, it’s getting taped and shared and publicized. Because of social media, these images are being reposted, and retweeted, and are reaching people worldwide in moments.
It is important to understand that racism never went away, nor racial profiling, nor unconstitutional practices that target specific demographics, like stop-and-frisk practices, mass incarceration of certain demographics, the use of excessive force by the police, and a lack of accountability. I don’t think racism and discrimination will ever go away until we create change in several areas, and one of them is in police conduct. This is a cause I am passionate about, and I will speak up and advocate for more oversight, even if it makes America and the media uncomfortable.
A little discomfort is okay if we can start a conversation about additional police training and practices, or necessary protocols, departmental oversight, and checks and balances, to ensure accountability. If a little discomfort leads to improved relations and interactions between the police and the public, then being uncomfortable is worth it, because sometimes the end justifies the means.
I recently spoke with a police chief in Connecticut who also shared the belief that what happened to me in New York was grossly unfair and should never happen. He believed that communication is a big factor that can help change policing. Communication between the police officers and the community as well as communication between the officers on the scene and the person they have in custody. He was also shocked to find out that there was no report written and that the four other officers stood by Frascatore’s statement of what happened until they reviewed the video evidence, after which their report of the incident changed. Despite this, the police chief truly does not believe there is still a “blue wall of silence.” I want to share his optimism, but when it happens to you, your optimism starts to fade. I do share his view that open communication between the officers and the people in the communities they patrol is a step in the right direction. Longer training, along with sensitivity and implicit bias training, are also integral parts of the solution.
Although there are few people in America who do not know about Kaepernick’s protest, he is not the first professional athlete to take a public stand during the anthem. Not many people are familiar with the former Denver Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who in 1996 faced severe repercussions for praying during the national anthem. Considered one of the greatest free-throw shooters in the history of the game, Abdul-Rauf lost millions of dollars in endorsement deals, and his nine-year NBA career was thrown into turmoil when he was caught on camera praying during the anthem. This drew the ire of fans and the media.
Abdul-Rauf refused to acknowledge the flag because it conflicted with some of his Islamic beliefs. At first no one noticed, because he either stretched or stayed in the locker room during the anthem, until a reporter asked him about it and his response caused a media frenzy. Abdul-Rauf said he viewed the American flag as “a symbol of oppression and racism,” and that standing for the anthem would conflict with his Muslim faith. “You can’t be for God and for oppression. It’s clear in the Quran, Islam is the only way,” he said at the time. “I don’t criticize those who stand, so don’t criticize me for sitting.”
The NBA suspended him for one game, citing a rule that players must line up in a “dignified posture” for the anthem. “It cost him almost $32,000 of his $2.6 million salary,” the journalist Jesse Washington wrote in the blog The Undefeated.
The players union supported Abdul-Rauf, and he quickly reached a compromise with the league that allowed him to stand and pray with his head down during the anthem. But at the end of the season, the Nuggets traded Abdul-Rauf, who averaged a team-high 19.2 points and 6.8 assists, to the Sacramento Kings. His playing time dropped. He lost his starting spot. After his contract expired in 1998, Abdul-Rauf couldn’t get so much as a tryout with any NBA team. He was just 29 years old. . . .
After the NBA shunned him, he played a season in Turkey, making about half of the $3.3 million he earned in the last year of his NBA contract. Abdul-Rauf caught on with the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies in 2000–2001, but played only 12 minutes per game. He never got another NBA opportunity, playing another six seasons in Russia, Italy, Greece, Saudi Arabia and Japan before retiring in 2011.2
Not only was Abdul-Rauf’s career in jeopardy, but he and his family also received death threats. The letters “KKK” were spray painted on a sign near where his new home was being built. Abdul-Rauf decided to put the property up for sale, but while it sat vacant, it was set on fire and burned to the ground. He eventually moved his family to Europe, not only for their safety but also to be able to play professional basketball.
“It’s priceless to know that I can go to sleep knowing that I stood to my principles,” Abdul-Rauf told The Undefeated. “Whether I go broke, whether they take my life, whatever it is, I stood on principles. To me, that is worth more than wealth and fame.”
Abdul-Rauf has not spoken to Kaepernick. But the basketball player supports the quarterback’s protest and message “1,000 percent,” saying that it created a valuable debate. “It’s good to continue to draw people’s attention to what’s going on whether you’re an athlete, a politician, or a garbage man. These discussions are necessary,” he said. “Sometimes it takes people of that stature, athletes and entertainers, because the youth are drawn to them, [more than] teachers and professors, unfortunately.”3
Abdul-Rauf lost prime years of NBA stardom, faced severe financial fallout, received death threats against him and his family, had his home burned down, and had to leave the country to play professionally. Yet Abdul-Rauf still does not stand for the national anthem. In the 1990s, few athletes made public protests about social issues. Abdul-Rauf’s protest was a pivotal moment that completely changed the course of his athletic career, and his life. He was a precursor to athletes like Kaepernick, and today’s resurgence of athlete activists, who are inciting change and taking a stand against what they feel is unjust. As Abdul-Rauf said of the growing movement, “It is beautiful to see, and it’s going to be hard to stop.”
When we look at discrimination sixty years ago during the years of integration, we can see that it was accepted, or at the very least it was expected. One of the major challenges then was being openly hated and harassed. Today, for the most part, hatred and harassment are much more behind the scenes. Social media has given people an anonymous voice and a platform from which they are free to speak their mind. Because of this shift, the challenge that athletes who advocate for a cause face is to have to read about, and see, the often vitriolic responses. They are faced day after day, even minute by minute, in the continuous news cycle and on social media, with insults, disparaging comments, and sometimes even threats. We can never know how real those threats are, as opposed to back when they were very real. Abdul-Rauf left the country not only to play professional basketball but also because he feared for his safety and that of his family.
If one of those threats turned physical, there were no social media or video accounts to shed light on what really happened or to prove one person’s word over another. Players were also more isolated and perhaps even more insulated. Sixty years ago, racism was the norm. The Klan was a very real danger and part of everyday life in many parts of the country. Jim Crow laws were still in effect and there were still many people who spoke openly and publicly about segregation. In many parts of the country it was widely accepted that there were genetic differences between blacks and whites and that blacks were inferior. This kind of thinking now seems absurd, but especially considering it was common only sixty years ago, you have to wonder if it ever went away. The considerations of protesting in the South were very different from protesting in the North. In the South, civil rights activists would face openly hostile disagreement and also perhaps deadly repercussions.
These deadly repercussions, or any actions against you, could even be justified in court and the justice system at that time. There was an overriding feeling that blacks had no right to protest anything. Those days, it was not just your money, or your endorsements, sponsors, or your fan base at stake; it could also be your life. There was the possibility that you could be lynched by the Klan, that your home could be burned down, your property destroyed, or even that your family could be in jeopardy. Just twenty years ago, Abdul-Rauf encountered that type of aggression.
Those are some of the dangers you faced in the past if you were advocating for racial equality or against discrimination. The plus side was that it was before social media and you could shut it out. You could far more easily disconnect from the news and not have to be aware of the media all the time. Today it is very difficult to get away from the news. It is far too easy to check in with Twitter, or Facebook, or turn on the news, which is available 24/7. Our smartphones are continuously updating us with alerts. In some cases, this easy access to information can be useful, but in others, it can be unrelenting.
For a while back in September, October, and November 2016 it was definitely unrelenting. It seemed like every day there was a new case of an unarmed person of color being shot and killed by the police. Quite often these people weren’t doing anything illegal, like Philando Castile, or Terence Crutcher. This type of constant media information will either empower us to rally together in protest using social media and all the news outlets at our disposal, or it will immobilize us, shock us into catatonia, as we disconnect to get away from it.
I am astonished that so many Americans think that because we had a two-term black president, racism no longer exists. Even when it is right in front of them, as with the many videotaped shootings of black men, they still do not believe it. The general response is that the victims had to have done something wrong. This speaks directly to my incident. I was standing in the middle of the street minding my own business when I was tackled by a police officer for something I was completely innocent of.
It is a sad commentary, because we don’t want to believe the statistics. According to a 2015 Los Angeles Daily News article, “American police kill civilians at a shocking rate compared to other developed countries. . . . While no US government agency is keeping reliable records of how many people die each year during encounters with police, the best estimates suggest the number is no lower than 400 per year, and most likely around 1,000. Police in peer nations like Germany, Denmark, the UK and other liberal democracies—meanwhile—rarely kill civilians. Even accounting for population size, the frequency with which American police kill civilians is shocking. Not twice as often, or three times as often. We’re talking factors of 20 to 70.”
The Washington Post’s police shootings database reports that 991 people were killed by police in 2015, and 963 people were shot and killed by police in 2016, “many of whom were unarmed, mentally ill, and people of color.” That number is much higher, according to the Guardian’s police killings database, Killed by Police, which counts 1,092 people to have died at the hands of police in 2016. Going by the Guardian’s count, Native Americans and black Americans are being killed at the highest rates in the United States. February and March were the deadliest months in 2016, with 100 people killed by police each month.
Michelle Alexander, a law professor at Ohio State, wrote in her bestseller, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, that in 2012, when the book was published, “more Black men are in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, before the Civil War began.” If these statistics do not seem like an inequity in America I think we should ask ourselves why not. America does not want to believe in prison for profit or the mass incarceration of African Americans. We do not want to believe in police brutality or misconduct unless we see it. Then, when we do see videos of it, we still do not want to believe it. Why do we think these incidents have nothing to do with race or discrimination? It is baffling that so many people do not believe that racism still exists when in the last few years there has been a surge in racial violence and instances of police misconduct against minorities.
In today’s “postracial” America there are still practices, like stop and frisk, that are targeted to certain segments of the population. Or stand-your-ground laws, which seem biased toward one part of the population, if we consider the 2012 shooting death of seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. Meanwhile this same law protects others, like George Zimmerman, who shot and killed Martin. It seems inherently dangerous for the use of deadly force to be condoned because someone feels like they are in danger and can shoot to kill even if the person they have shot does not actually pose a threat.
Open-carry laws also seem more partial to one segment of the population while at times being a death sentence for others, like Philando Castile. This law protects armed militia groups like the Ammon Bundy ranchers in Oregon, who took over government land in January and February in 2016, and literally threatened the police with an arsenal of weapons unless their demands were met. The militia will serve no prison time. Meanwhile in Cleveland, Ohio, Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old black boy playing in a park with a BB gun, was immediately shot and killed by police. This case in particular is made all the more confounding because Ohio is an open-carry state. If the gun was a real gun and not a plastic one, Rice would not have been breaking a law to have it, and his having it should not have warranted such a police response.
Today, with President Trump making it okay to advance racist ideology, by condemning an entire religion for the acts of minority extremists, I do not see policy becoming more fair toward minorities. Rather, I see the opposite. Even the phrase that won Trump the election, “Make America Great Again,” appears to want to invoke a time in America that was never “great” for minorities. It reads like a claim to take America back to the days of Jim Crow segregation and open discrimination, some of which we have already seen postelection with hate crimes against minorities and Muslims. “Make America Great Again” sounds like a rally cry to go back to the days when it was okay to be openly racist and discriminatory, as with his Muslim bans, proposed walls separating America from Mexico, xenophobia, rolling back women’s rights, voter disenfranchisement, and voter suppression. It is a slippery slope to be hostile and inflammatory to a segment of the population or want to punish an entire religion, and it should remind America of the dark days of its past.
When athletes take a stand, we can jeopardize our earning potential and our financial security. It can be detrimental financially, societally, emotionally, and even physically to advocate for a cause or to publicly voice our opinion. Certainly for Abdul-Rauf and Kaepernick there have been repercussions. They have gotten vicious vocal backlash from the media, and have affected their careers and their ability to play in terms of endorsements and marketing dollars. These selfless acts are reason enough to be impressed by athlete activists who are gambling far more than fan appeal. These are considerations every professional athlete who decides to speak out for a cause takes into account.
It is one thing to take a stand, but for Kaepernick to donate a million dollars of his own money or to donate the money that he’s made from his jersey sales to community organizations is another. This tells me that he is willing to make sacrifices for what he believes in. It also tells me that his protest is not only a symbolic gesture but also a very tangible act.
More so than just a personal backlash, Kaepernick is also making monetary sacrifices at the same time. People may say, “Well, he makes twelve million dollars, so how does donating one million dollars really affect him?” But what the public does not realize is that an athlete’s career, depending on the sport, tends to be short. In the NFL the average career is three years. Right now, Kaepernick is already playing on borrowed time.
Professional athletes retire a lot earlier than age sixty-five. A football player still going hard at forty is rare. Most athletes either retire or leave the game in their thirties. I retired from playing professional tennis at thirty-three. When we retire so early in our career, we need enough money to take care of our family. Sadly, it has become common to vilify the athlete as pampered. Fans read about big salaries and think we should just be grateful for our salaries for playing a game, and that part of our job is to entertain them and not to have an opinion while doing it. Many of these fans also believe they have a right to this opinion because they pay our salary by buying tickets to our games, or merchandise.
But athletes’ ability to make a considerable amount of money in contracts or endorsements is not a reason for fans, the media, or even our franchises or sponsors to think it allows them to have control over what we think, do, or feel passionate about. Why should athletes, because we make a certain amount of money, not feel we can express our opinion and concentrate only on sports?
Why are we criticized for feeling strongly about an issue and wanting to do something about it? Why can’t we question what is going on in the world or want to see change? That is what I am doing when I speak out publicly about more accountability and oversight for law enforcement. This is what LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and several of their Miami Heat teammates were doing when they wore hoodies before a game to protest the killing of Trayvon Martin and police brutality. That is what Chris Kluwe, Scott Fujita, and Brendon Ayanbadejo are doing when they lobby for LGBT rights and marriage equality. That is what Venus Williams, Maria Sharapova, and Kim Clijsters are doing when they rally for equal prize money for female tennis players, and what Serena Williams is doing when she speaks out for equal endorsement deals and equal recognition for female tennis players.
This is what Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf did when he was true to his beliefs, even to the detriment of his career and even if it placed him in harm’s way. This is what Colin Kaepernick is doing when he takes a knee during the national anthem to support Black Lives Matter. Sadly, what is lost in all the media outrage, and what we should understand, is that what Kaepernick is doing is not denigrating or disrespecting the flag or the country. He is exercising his inalienable right to respond to the anthem in a way that feels genuine and authentic to him. That distinction has also been lost.
What activist athletes are saying is, Why can’t this be better? How can we draw attention to issues that are important to us, that we are passionate about? Why should we not be able to express our position on it? Why are we not allowed to have an opinion outside sports? Where did the notion that we are only there to entertain the fans come from? The idea that we are not allowed to publicly voice our opinion because of how much money we make is oppressive, and undercuts our rights as Americans. Ultimately, the amount of money someone makes should not disqualify him or her from having an opinion and expressing it, especially if it can create a positive change.
Just like anyone else in America, athletes should be able to have an opinion and to act on it. In so many ways, that is what being an American citizen and living in this country is about. These freedoms are what America was built on and what we as a country and a nation fought so hard for. When being a professional athlete brings with it stipulations about how we can voice our opinions, or if we can even have an opinion because of preconceived notions of what we can contribute to the social discourse, it is akin to having our First Amendment right to freedom of speech taken away, or at the very least, muffled.
Yet when we look at the contributions of so many athletes over the last several decades, whether in sports, through philanthropy, or through social change, it is clear that those contributions cannot be denied or downplayed. Over the last seventy years, athletes have changed social, political, and educational policy. We have started a social discourse on women’s rights, marriage equality, and LGBT rights, and have made strides in each of those areas. As seen throughout history, through some of the phenomenal athlete activists profiled in Ways of Grace, when we advocate to create change and use our global platform, network, and resources, the world notices, and things do change.
This ability to create change is one of the reasons why it is such a promising sign that Kaepernick’s protest has gotten so much media attention. Regardless of if it is positive or negative, the media is drawing attention to it. However, some of the most confounding criticisms I have heard about Kaepernick from pundits and the public is that police brutality is not the most detrimental thing happening in the African American community. Whether that is true or not, Black Lives Matter is a cause that is important to him. He should not have to concern himself with issues that people think are more important. His causes should be his own. I would not want to be told to focus on issues other than the ones I want to talk about, write about, research, or advocate about.
My sport, tennis, is an individual-player sport, in which you worry about your own career, and you don’t have to answer to a league, franchise, or a team. I don’t know personally the repercussions or ramifications of protesting as a team player. I can’t imagine how it must feel to kneel during the anthem while your teammates stand around you. I do not have to be in sync with the team, I am out there alone. Taking a stand as a team-sport player comes with many more considerations because you are also drawing attention to your team, your teammates, and your league. This makes what Kaepernick and his supporters in the NBA, the NFL, and the WNBA are doing all the more brave and admirable.
I have talked to a few football players who say that playing in a divided locker room is detrimental to the team’s success. No matter how much talent you have, not playing as a unified team will undercut the efficiency of the players, the morale, and their play as a team. It will show on the field. When you consider that Kaepernick had to know this going in, you have to commend his commitment. We, as athletes and as people, do not do something that can negatively affect us unless we strongly believe in what we are doing. But what I have heard from people closely associated with the 49ers is that they are not divided. Kaepernick’s team and the organization are behind him, and believe in what he is doing. Or, they have not spoken out against it.
Activism is never easy. Speaking up in any way about anything, especially when you are in the public eye, is even harder, because public figures are easy targets. To be told or made to feel that what we are passionate about is not what we should be passionate about stifles our expression and robs us of our freedoms and civil liberties.