August 14, 2016, pre-season football; the Niners versus the Texans. This was the game one individual chose to make a decision that would still affect him, the league, and others to this day.
“People who were anonymous in life had become famous in death,” Michael Rosenburg from Sports Illustrated wrote.
On that warm August day in Santa Clara, California, Colin Kaepernick sat down during the national anthem as a form of protest for the deaths of African Americans across the nation.
The protest had taken a couple weeks to grasp the media’s attention. Then, he was asked about the protest and its significance. The articulate ex-quarterback told the media his reasoning for sitting (and later kneeling) was proclamation about inequality and social justice in America.
A couple weeks ago, Colin Kaepernick was awarded the 2017 Sports Illustrated Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. The recipient must be “[an] individual[s] whose dedication to the ideals of sportsmanship has spanned decades and whose career in athletics has directly or indirectly impacted the world,” per Sports Illustrated.com.
Ali had the same passion for social justice as Kaepernick. He lost years of his career for refusing to serve in the military in disapproval of the Vietnam War. He backed up his decision by questioning why the country would want an African American to leave home and fight other people of color when African Americans at home were denied basic human rights. Like Ali, Kaepernick has lost a year of football partially because of his protest.
The protest created conversation and controversy throughout the country. While some criticized and shamed Kaepernick for the act, others admired it. As the nation was split, so was the rest of the National Football League. Some players like Michael Bennett, Kenny Stills, and Marshawn Lynch have kneeled, and continue to kneel, in agreement with Kaepernick’s statement.
It has been 14 months since his first act of protest, and Kaepernick still remains unemployed by an NFL franchise. Because of this, he has become a full-fledged activist, springing into nationwide action to fight the social injustices within our communities.
His website, kaepernick7.com, houses Kaepernick's latest events and philanthropic work. A few events that stand out are the Million Dollar Pledge and Know Your Rights Camp. The Million Dollar Pledge created by Kaepernick in 2016. He vowed to donate one million dollars and his total jersey sales from the 2016 season to organizations working in oppressed communities. The Know Your Rights Camp is a “free campaign for youthfully funded by Colin Kaepernick to raise awareness of higher education, self-empowerment, and instruction to properly interact with law enforcement in various scenarios.”
Colin Kaepernick was deserving of such a prestigious award and accepted it with open arms. As a self-aware individual, he looks beyond himself, aiming to minimize the social injustices in our country. After receiving his award presented by Beyoncé, Kaepernick spoke briefly, stating “with or without the NFL’s platform, I will continue to work for the people because my platform is the people.”
