When Civil Rights activists walked on Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama, they weren't protesting traffic. When colonists threw tea off the British ship into the Boston Harbor, they weren't protesting the tea. When NFL players take a knee for the national anthem, they aren't protesting the flag or the anthem. What do all of these protests have in common? They're protesting injustice.

On May 23, the NFL owners unanimously passed a rule that fines players who disrespect the national anthem. The new rule would make sense if the players were actually protesting the national anthem—they are not. They are protesting brutality by police and continued racial inequality in America.

The anthem is simply a way to express their beliefs. For almost two years, almost every single headline has been about “x” player protesting the anthem. It’s amazing how much can be twisted in just four words in a headline. At a minimum, forcing a player to stand for the anthem is forced patriotism. It borders on infringing upon the players’ rights as an American. In a tweet , the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said “telling peaceful protestors to leave and do it behind closed doors is dangerous and un-American.”

Forcing someone to salute to a country that doesn’t take care of its own people sounds like something that happens in a third-world, dictator-ruled country. Find me one NFL player who has knelt for the anthem and his intention is to disrespect the military. These players have been unanimous in saying that their intention is to bring attention to the disproportionate number of minorities who are imprisoned and beaten by police every day.

70 percent of the players in the NFL are black, but 31 of the 32 teams are owned by rich, white men—many of whom supported Donald Trump in the election. Supporting a candidate in an election is not an issue here, but it’s ridiculous to succumb to anything that Trump says. What’s unfortunate is that the NFL is scared of Donald Trump. Seriously. “Our league is f—king terrified of Trump,” one team official told Bleacher Report. “We’re scared of him.” Does the official have a point? There’s controversy on more than one front for the league.

It’s not uncommon for the NFL to turn a blind eye to men who abuse women and their children but are still looked upon favorably and still have jobs. And in the past few years, the NFL has been under scrutiny for the safety of its games. In a study,110 of 111 brains of deceased NFL players had a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). So instead of focusing on those more important issues, the NFL decides to bow down to supreme leader Donald Trump and his racist dog whistle.

Like almost anything involving rich people in this country, you have to follow the money. NFL players were not on the field for the national anthem until 2009. Between 2011 and 2014, the federal government gave $5.4 million in taxpayer dollars to 14 NFL teams to honor military personnel and put on patriotic salutes to the military. Between 2012 and 2015, the Department of Defense spent $10.4 million on marketing and advertising with professional sports teams.

Then in 2016, the controversy with Kaepernick started. Since then, it’s become the most divisive topic in sports. It seemed to come to its peak in the 2017 season when Donald Trump said that the NFL players were “sons of bitches” and should be fired. The president of the United States used an expletive to define hard-working, self-made millionaires—something Donald knows nothing and has lied about.

Other than money, the real reason is underlying and probably uncomfortable for many. Black people protesting has irritated the rich and powerful for decades—all the way back to the Civil Rights Movement of the twentieth century. Colin Kaepernick and his fellow athletes have protested in the most peaceful way possible, and a large group of Americans is outraged, and many are out of pure ignorance and a blind loyalty to a president who doesn't care about them.

Now, as the Trump presidency is deteriorating by the day, Vice President Mike Pence is claiming the latest rule change as a victory for Trump and celebrating as the NFL’s owners turned their backs on their own players who sacrifice their blood, sweat and tears for the game. Once again, we see that people with power pray for poor black folk but only listen to rich white folk.