With a swoosh, Nike confirms sport is part of Trump battle
Sportswear firm stirs up a storm by using NFL anti-racism protester Colin Kaepernick in its ads
The Colin Kaepernick story has taken a predictably wrong turn into a wrangle over whether people should wear Nike trainers or set fire to them in the back yard. Why keep your mind on the issues when you can join a bunfight over a brand?
Kaepernick’s protests in the United States were never about the national anthem and are not, now, to do with trainers, socks, swooshes or corporate opportunism. Nike’s decision to mark the 30th anniversary of its “Just Do It” campaign with a poster of Kaepernick announcing: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything,” has incensed the kind of people who tend to think real “sacrifice” is made by other poor sods – US troops for example – while they settle down for Monday Night Football with beer and nachos.
By the same token, many Americans who defend their right to walk round with semi-automatic weapons are slower to protect first amendment rights to free speech, which Kaepernick and other NFL players exercised by kneeling during The Star-spangled Banner to protest police killings of unarmed black people and other racial injustices.
Those outrages – so often unpunished – were a tricky battleground for bigots to defend, so they contorted the debate to make it about respect for the anthem, and, with another moral leap, the country’s armed forces and the sacrifices they make in defence of liberty (though American freedoms are denied to Kaepernick, who has effectively been removed from the NFL).
When Donald Trump called the gridiron kneelers “sons of bitches” it was pointed out that black males between 15-34 are nine times more likely to be killed by law enforcement officers than other Americans. Kaepernick has said: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people. It would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are people getting away with murder.”
A year after Trump’s remarks, which he made while also claiming there were some “fine people” at a Neo-nazi demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, political analysts expect him to step up his attacks on protesting athletes ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Trump told Kaepernick to “find NFL owners and the Players’ Association look for an agreement for protests to continue without players kneeling during the anthem. Socks worn by Kaepernick showing police as cartoon pigs are another favoured trope for those who want to portray him as anti-american. In fact, socks have never featured so highly in US politics. A roadie and “ex-marine” chopped the Nike swoosh off his socks and posted a picture that went … you guessed it, viral.
Off to the side, you can now join a chat about Nike’s motivations. Is a company that has been associated with sweatshop labour really a moral crusader for oppressed Americans, or merely a firm with good marketing data? Somewhere in the conglomerate that brought us the Nike Oregon Project, somebody has clearly decided they can do without the 36 per cent of Americans who still approve of Trump. Nike is taking a long-term bet on greater tolerance and harmony – or, more likely, the multicultural end of the sportswear market – with a slogan that hardly qualifies as inflammatory, in any context.
Most of us would not “sacrifice everything” for our beliefs because we lack the courage, or have responsibilities to others. We muddle along, trying and often failing to do the right thing. Some are prepared to risk the total loss of all they have, but Kaepernick already has a monument, because he has taken a stand in an industry – the NFL – that sees itself as an expression of conservative American values, not a catalyst for social change.
The point was well made by Corbin Smith, a US columnist, who wrote: “Compostable cups, recyclable cans, electric cars, you name it, the product of the future is grown from the seed of liberal guilt. It is the same with Nike giving Kaepernick the space to be a hero in their ads. It attaches the virtue of a dude – and make no mistake, Kaepernick is a virtuous and important dude, even if he is taking a check from Nike – to their product, which was previously associated with sweatshop labor in the eyes of the woke [socially aware] consumer.” Other US commentators have pointed out that Nike might have chased Muhammad Ali’s signature when he was banned from boxing for refusing to fight in Vietnam. In the right hands, protest can be packaged as hip, sellable. But the protest against black Americans being shot by police officers for minor traffic violations or suffocated for having a disagreement with a shopping mall security guard is not about anthems or Nike gear.
The smell of burning comes from a much bigger place than a pair of trainers smouldering in a Trump supporter’s yard.