NFL: Will white fans accept player protests?
“Four years after Colin Kaepernick took a knee,” the NFL is seeking atonement, said Paul Newberry in the Associated Press. The league kicked off its season this week amid a pandemic and a nationwide social justice movement that saw Kansas City Chiefs players link arms in solidarity, “End Racism” printed on the field, and “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a song sometimes called the black national anthem, added to the pregame program. Those symbolic statements brought some boos from the 17,000 socially distanced fans, illustrating the NFL’s predicament: Can it support black players who are part of the Black Lives Matter movement without alienating white fans? The league is also walking the pandemic tightrope, testing players daily and keeping most stadiums empty or at very limited capacity in hopes of preventing outbreaks.
At this rate, the league won’t need to prohibit fans from attending games, said Hugo Gurdon in WashingtonExaminer.com. “America’s game” should be an escape from “political exhibitionism,” but the NFL has been cowed into adding “virtue-signaling graffiti about race relations” on uniforms and playing fields. “Football,” President Trump said, “is just not the same.” Fans seem to agree: Ratings plummeted for an opener featuring the Super Bowl champion Chiefs, and viewership was mostly down Sunday. Black players demanded more from the league after George Floyd’s killing by police, said Jim Geraghty in NationalReview.com, and had to settle for some uncontroversial verbiage about how the NFL supports “the ongoing fight for equality in this country.” But even that was booed. So far, moments of unity are “proving to be not all that uniting.”
Change won’t happen overnight, said Jerry
Brewer in WashingtonPost.com. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell recently acknowledged that Kaepernick was unfairly vilified for his decision to kneel during the national anthem to protest racism, and fans are more enlightened about the purpose of protests: “56 percent of Americans consider it appropriate for athletes to protest inequality by kneeling,” according to a new poll. Although several team owners are staunch Trump supporters, most coaches and other team officials finally seem to empathize with the pain of black players who see African-Americans their age “dying in the streets.” The NFL has been given a second chance to confront racial issues, and this reckoning won’t go smoothly. “Brace for a treacherous but revealing journey.”