First white NFLer kneels during anthem
Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett said last week it would take a white player to kneel for the national anthem “to really get things changed.”
Seth DeValve is testing that belief.
The second-year Browns tight end knelt for “The Star-Spangled Banner” during Monday’s game in Cleveland against the Giants, part of a circle of more than a dozen players who bowed their heads in silent protest. They were flanked by several more teammates who stood and put their hands on the kneelers’ shoulders.
DeValve is the first white player to join the movement started by quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who currently is not in the league. The Eagles’ Chris Long, who also is white, stood with his hand on a kneeling teammate’s shoulder last week.
For DeValve, a 2016 fourth-round pick out of Princeton, protesting treatment of minorities is personal: He’s married to an African-American woman, and he expressed hope his future children would grow up in a better world.
“It saddens me that in 2017 we have to do something like that,” said the 24-year-old native of Manchester, Conn., who said he loves this country and supports its troops. “The United States is the greatest country in the world. It is because it provides opportunities to its citizens that no other country does. The issue is that it doesn’t provide equal opportunity to everybody.
“I wanted to support my African-American teammates today who wanted to take a knee. We wanted to draw attention to the fact that there’s things in this country that still need to change. I myself will be raising children that don’t look like me. I want to do my part as well — do everything I can to raise them in a better environment than we have right now. I wanted to take the opportunity with my teammates during the anthem to pray for our country and also to draw attention to the fact that we have work to do. That’s why I do what I did.”