A message finally heard
Focus this time cannot be allowed to shift from real issues
The George Floyd story is sad vindication for Colin Kaepernick.
Anquan Boldin can see history repeating. In 2016 and the years to come, Boldin said, he watched as critics “hijacked” Colin Kaepernick’s message after he knelt during the national anthem before NFL games in protest of police killing and brutalizing black people. Rather than police reform, conversation swung to respecting the military and the American flag. Some — including President Donald Trump — called for players to stick to football and for owners to fire those who protested.
“Those were the people who truly wanted to ignore what players were talking about,” Boldin said. “The message hasn’t changed from that time to now.”
Boldin, a Super Bowl-winning wide receiver who retired in 2017, co-founded the Players Coalition to focus on reforming the criminal justice system. He now sees the same phenomenon unfolding on a different scale in the wake of the civil unrest that has convulsed the country after the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. To Boldin, some reaction to current protests has been an echo of Kaepernick’s experience, with news coverage and opinion turning to who bears responsibility for looting and riots rather than the protesters’ call to end police brutality.
“As opposed to people talking about a system that allows a guy that has 18 complaints against him to continue to be on the force and then eventually kill somebody, before we really want to deal with that individual,” Boldin said, referring to Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin, one of four officers charged in the killing. “As opposed to talking about that system and pulling the mask off of that, we would rather talk about people rioting, people looting and people peacefully protesting.”
As the sports world has responded to Floyd’s death and ensuing protests, few voices carry more weight than NFL players who followed Kaepernick’s lead in 2016 and 2017 and protested, or advocated against, systemic racism in policing. They spoke out, often in the face of scorn and ridicule, years ago about an issue that continues to roil America.
Brandon Marshall, a friend and college teammate of Kaepernick’s, was a Denver Broncos linebacker in 2016 when he became one of the first NFL players to follow Kaepernick’s lead, kneeling during the anthem before the NFL’s marquee season-opening game. Marshall said he feels the message Kaepernick tried to send has been tragically validated.
“It’s unfortunate that somebody had to die, but yes,” Marshall said. “I do wish people would have taken it serious back then. I truly wish they would have. But they didn’t.
“Now people are looking at Kap like, maybe he’s not such a bad guy. Now the NFL is putting out statements when they should have put out a statement in 2016. I’m glad that people’s eyes are open at this point in time. I don’t want to live in the past, but I do wish it was taken more seriously.”
Current events have forced the NFL to reconcile how it responded to players’ initial wave of protests. (See Roger Goodell’s comments in related story on this page). It sits in contrast to what those like Boldin say were hollow statements of support made in the years since Kaepernick took a knee for the first time.
“If you feel that way, Colin would still be in the league,” Boldin said. “If you really felt like players were well within their rights to protest, that you were behind guys protesting peacefully, Colin would still have a job.”
Marshall agreed that it was difficult to square previous statements from the NFL and teams with how he was treated when he knelt.
“I look at these statements and I try to look through an objective lens. But it’s still hard,” Marshall said. “I know how I was treated and what they thought about us at that point in time. But I’m glad that people’s eyes are starting to be open. At the point when I was kneeling last time, I was losing endorsements. Companies were dropping me because of my stance on the issue, because they didn’t see an issue. Or they didn’t think it was the correct platform.”
Still, some misperception of the players’ message persists. In an interview Wednesday with Yahoo! Finance, New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees was asked how he would respond to more players kneeling during the national anthem. “I would will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America, of our country,” Brees said. He then praised his grandfathers, both of whom fought in wars. Brees has since apologized for his comments, but he was skewered by many of his peers.
Marshall joined Kaepernick’s protest after Kaepernick switched from sitting during the anthem to kneeling after a discussion with former Green Beret turned Seattle Seahawks long-snapper Nate Boyer.
“The narrative got switched up, and it started to be about the American flag,” Marshall said. “And it started to be about the military, when an actual ex-military man told Kap the best way to protest would be to kneel instead of sit. And then people started saying, you’re disrespecting … the military.”
Boldin said protesters’ message cannot be lost now, after so much anger has spilled forth.
“The one thing I want to happen is people to understand we are fighting a system,” Boldin said. “We are fighting people that are in positions of power. For a lot of people, the last thing they would want to relinquish is power. There’s a lot of people that would give up money before they would give up power. We have to understand that. We have a fight on our hands.
“To think a couple people are going to get this done — not gonna happen. We need as many voices as possible. We need as many people as possible to pull the covers off of the policies and a system that has allowed this to go on since its inception. If we don’t tackle this at this point in time, if we don’t find a new way to police the communities in America, I guarantee we will be right back at this spot at some point in the near future.”