Tag: Kneeling Protest

Lets Talk About What Nobody Wants to Talk About

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It’s been difficult to write much the last week while the country is gripped in protests, riots, civil unrest, and let us not forget about the coronavirus pandemic thats killed more than 100,000 people. 2020 has been the year from hell and the murder of George Floyd was the tipping point for many Americans.

In times like these we typically turn towards sports to help heal the rawest of wounds. It sounds silly, but it’s true. Sports has always been the unifying force that society uses to bring people of all different backgrounds together, if only for a couple of hours.

I’m torn on this because sports have unified people during horrific times like 9/11 and helped kickstart difficult conversations after tragedies like Eric Garner’s death, but maybe not having sports right now is for the best? Without any sports to speak of theres nothing for us to turn our attention towards. We’re all stuck at home and forced to have the difficult conversations that sometimes we’re all too quick to turn the page on.

The 24/7 news cycle never sleeps, but it seems like as a nation we’re all focusing on the same exact thing right now. We may fall on different sides of the issue, but we’re all talking about the same issue, which is how progress begins.

A lot of people are learning, and hopefully growing, in real time. Drew Brees faced the swift wrath of not just twitter, but his own teammates and peers from around the NFL after he denounced protestors kneeling during the anthem.

…and then apologized less than 24 hours later. Life comes at you fast, Drew. It was a shockingly tone deaf statement from one of the faces of the NFL. It’s been 3+ years since Colin Kaepernick started kneeling during the National Anthem to protest police brutality, but plenty of people, Drew Brees front and center, still think it’s about the military or “disrespecting the flag.”

I don’t know what kind of reaction Brees expected from these comments during what may be the height of racial tensions in my lifetime, but he has, unsurprisingly, been getting ripped by players across the league including by his own No. 1 receiver, Michael Thomas.

Malcolm Jenkins put out a heartbreaking video directly responding to Brees’ comments and effectively telling him to just shut up and listen.

The McCourty twins eviscerated Drew Brees for leaning on the military as a reason for denouncing the kneeling protestors.

Brees issued a lengthy apology this morning, less than 24 hours after his original comments, but I find it hard to believe he was this glib to begin with so the apology does ring a bit hollow. Hopefully Brees and everyone who sees this exchange use it as a learning experience.

We try to not get too political here, but after hearing the pain in the voices of some of my black friends it would be selfish to not use the minuscule platform we have here to at least say something. I’m a white guy in his thirties so I’ll never know what it’s like to be a black man in America, but one of the main things I heard from friends of mine is to simply see and acknowledge our differences. Saying you “don’t see color” is misguided because that only blinds you to the issues that people of different races experience on a daily basis. It’s important to see, and celebrate, the differences between us all. Ignoring those differences may be done with good intentions, but it takes away from our ability to use any privilege we do have to help, even if its just calling out a friend or a family member on their shit.

I’ll leave you with this video that former Eagles linebacker Emmanuel Acho put out yesterday: Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man

Division III Football Player Cut by Team for Kneeling During National Anthem

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ESPN – A Division III football player has been dismissed from his team for kneeling during the national anthem before a game last weekend. Gyree Durante, a backup quarterback at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania, was kicked off the team after he knelt by himself during the national anthem before last Saturday’s 41-6 loss to Delaware Valley University.An Albright College spokeswoman said in a statement that the team’s leadership council, which consists of 24 players, voted to kneel during the coin toss and stand during the national anthem. Durante then decided to kneel during the national anthem on his own.

Alright, why don’t we just pump the fucking breaks here, Albright College. You’re a D-III liberal arts school; not the goddamn Dallas Cowboys. Its one thing for a multi-billion dollar industry to start getting pissy when players kneeling is screwing with their advertisers. Its another thing entirely for this football factory in Reading, Pennsylvania to start cutting teenagers for protesting. Not to mention this is college. A Liberal Arts college. What the hell do kids do in college besides drink and shackle themselves with a lifetime worth of debt if they’re not able to protest? Kids protest legitimately everything in college. Its supposed to be a learning environment. Not a place you should cut a kid for standing up (no pun intended) for what he believes in.

Now I’m pretty sure D-III schools don’t give out scholarships so its not like they ruined the kid’s life or anything, but come on. If we’re being honest, intentionally getting cut was probably half the reason he did it. Why am I practicing and going to film sessions and waking up early to wreck my knees and get CTE when I’m in college and should be funneling vodka cokes and blacking out on a Tuesday afternoon.

And we can all cut the crap about how he made his team look bad by being the only guy kneeling. Except for Captain America here:

Josh Powell, a freshman defensive end from Tampa, told NBC 10 that Durante broke his teammates’ trust by taking a knee during the national anthem. “We trusted him throughout the week, after time and time again he told us he would stand,” Powell said, according to NBC 10. “When you can’t have a player on a team that you can trust, he’s got to go.”

This guy just sounds like a Grade-A dickhead, a real practice hero. The guy who’s laying the hit stick on teammates during walkthroughs.

Look, I wouldn’t kneel during the anthem myself as I’d feel uncomfortable doing so, but thats the point. Thats what a lot of people are missing. Its supposed to make people feel uncomfortable, otherwise it wouldn’t get attention. It wouldn’t be a worthwhile protest if it wasn’t pissing people off. Now the next step is to articulate why you’re protesting and work towards having intelligent discussions about what everyone can do to impact change. Is every single player kneeling able to intelligently articulate the exact reasons why they’re kneeling and what it means to them? Probably not, but there’s plenty who are able to do just that so trying to ban kneeling or forcing players to stand will only create more divisiveness and ultimately other forms of protest.

Its supposed to start a conversation and make everyone take a look at the world we live in, for better or for worse, and try to understand the way others see the world from their perspective. Its called empathy. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re not, but the truth is almost always somewhere in the middle. So by outright dismissing the protest because you don’t agree with the method, you’re missing the boat.