This past Saturday, in a vain attempt to procrastinate on my thesis-writing, I watched CNN with my grandparents. Almost as soon as I sat down, a panel came on, two out of the three people haranguing San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's decision to remain seated during the previous days' pre-game National Anthem.
The panel did not tell us exactly what Kaepernick's response was, but I will:
"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."
My grandma, like many other Americans as of Friday evening, happened to agree with the other two panelists: "...if Kaepernick wanted to protest black lives in America so much, why did he stay in America? Why didn't he speak up for the domestic violence issues that flout the NFL? Huh? What about that?! He should get off his duff and leave!"
I couldn't believe my ears. What were the panelists saying? What was my grandma saying?! To be fair, and to wring the cliche saying drier than bacon grits, I wasn't born yesterday. To be fair, I am not an NFL aficionado (I watch the Superbowl for the commercials - that's how much of a football person I am). Also, I am intensely aware that racism does exist in pockets that one might least expect, like, say, family. Still though: the revelation alarmed me. Try as I might, I couldn't reason with her, be it with telling her about the surge of police killing and/or targeting black people (men, women, children, queer, young, old), about the Black Lives Matter movement, about the reason exactly why Kaepernick did what he did.
It led me to thinking that, if a white NFL player had sat down during the National Anthem (of which its third verse is actually a celebration of slavery), and, when asked why, told people that they did it because of the oppression of black Americans, they'd be lauded a hero. They would be a symbol of propriety, of activism made flesh. They'd probably be asked onto talk shows to illuminate the wandering masses as to why they decided to be a decent human being.
It also led me to think that, since it happened to be a biracial person who sat during the National Anthem, they are cursed out on social media. They are reviled as unpatriotic. They face political, personal, and career-based repercussions.
I almost thought of why that would happen, but I stopped. I already knew the answer. The answer is one that no one wants to admit to, but one that is already present in social media, in TV panelists, in family members, in the ugly recesses of history.
