USA TODAY International Edition
Politicians will pay price for excluding Kaepernick
The Wisconsin state Assembly’s Black History Month resolution was perfect the moment it was written. It included the names of more than two dozen prominent black Americans, including former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, baseball great Reggie Jackson and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who was born in Milwaukee.
What better way to show the range of heroes in Wisconsin, and the country, than with a list headlined by those names? You might not like or agree with all of them, but isn’t that the point? By leading their lives the way they have, by making us cheer, or boo, or think, they have made an undeniable impression on our culture and our history.
Enter Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke and Speaker Robin Vos, Republicans both. Steineke said the GOP would not support a resolution that included Kaepernick “for obvious reasons.” I guess we are to presume that Steineke’s “obvious reasons” would be Kaepernick’s peaceful protest of social injustice during the national anthem. Or is it the $1 million he gave away to charities, including the $25,000 he donated to Milwaukee non-profit Urban Underground, which works with teens?
Vos added that Republicans were “trying to find people who … bring us together, not look at people who draw some sort of vitriol from either side.”
That’s such an interesting quote. As we ponder the tens of thousands of Americans who are leading lives that draw some sort of vitriol from either side, I can think of a particular member of Vos’ party who revels in vitriol and lives in a big white house in Washington, D.C., but we don’t even need to go there. All we have to do is mention Reggie Jackson’s name in Fenway Park.
According to Molly Beck of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, both Steineke and Vos made this point: They wanted a resolution free of controversial figures.
Congratulations, legislators. If that’s the goal, you’ll have a list with literally no one on it.
Armed with their preposterous arguments, the GOP sadly blocked the original list because it included Kaepernick, forcing black Democratic lawmakers to agree to remove Kaepernick’s name in order for the resolution to pass.
Democratic state Rep. David Crowley, who wrote the resolution, called the GOP’s power-play “a textbook example of white privilege” and a “slap in the face.”
What he said next was most important.
“Many of these people that you don’t agree with will still be in the history books that your children and grandchildren will be reading.”
Let’s all envision Steineke and Vos and their cronies about 30 years from now, trying to explain to their grandchildren why they refused to vote for a Black History Month resolution because it included Kaepernick.
Good luck with that. Your grandchildren will be growing up in a much more demographically diverse nation, one in which white people will no longer be in the majority, one in which the Parkland generation will be our leaders.
What this will look like is probably unimaginable to Steineke and Vos now, but here’s a hint: In the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of people in this country despised Muhammad Ali. They couldn’t stand him for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War, for changing his name, for his outspoken activism. If we had told those people back then that someday well into the future, when Ali died in the 21st century, there would be such an outpouring of love and respect for him that it fueled a week of mourning around the world, they would not have believed it.
The same surprise awaits people like Steineke and Vos. What they did is bad enough in 2019. It will look far, far worse in 2049.