The Martyring of Colin Kaepernick [View all]

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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/03/colin-kaepernick-nfl-martyr-215572

The Martyring of Colin Kaepernick

How the NFL botched the quarterback’s protest and guaranteed the controversy will live on, whether he plays or not.

By BEN STRAUSS

September 03, 2017


On the afternoon of June 23, a civil rights activist sent an email directly to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, hoping to save the league from making a colossal PR blunder.

Dr. Harry Edwards, a trained sociologist, had been an adviser to sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith when they raised their fists on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics. Last year, he was a regular sounding board for Colin Kaepernick when the then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback began to kneel for the national anthem to protest racial inequality and conservative pundits like Tomi Lahren raked him as a “whiny, indulgent, attention-seeking cry baby." Now with a new season fast approaching, Kaepernick was still unsigned, even as scrap heap players who couldn’t match the record of a one-time Super Bowl quarterback were getting precious roster spots. Reporters had begun to openly suggest Kaepernick, good enough to sign a $127 million contract in 2014, was being blackballed—retaliation by a famously autocratic organization against a player who had dared to embarrass it.

But Edwards saw the Kaepernick saga in a larger and more politically fraught context. He saw a mixed-race player who challenged a league in which some 70 percent of the athletes are African-American and all but one owner and more than 80 percent of the fans are white. Edwards also saw an increasingly divided country led by a president who seemed to relish stoking racial tensions. If the NFL could not find a way to put Kaepernick on a roster, Edwards reasoned, the league risked turning a workplace dispute into a full-blown and far more embarrassing racial controversy. In his email to Goodell, which he shared with POLITICO, Edwards spelled it out as clearly as he could: “DON'T MAKE HIM A MARTYR!”

And that’s exactly what happened. With the regular season scheduled to start in four days, Kaepernick remains unsigned. Nefarious or not, the league’s collective refusal to put Kaepernick on the field has backfired. After Charlottesville, what had been a steady drip of news inside the sports section became a front-page cause with national ramifications, and Kaepernick became the silent symbol of a sideline protest movement that has grown far beyond the league's ability to contain it. A dozen Cleveland Browns players, white and black, knelt in a circle before one game; Seattle Seahawks defensive end Michael Bennett told Jake Tapper on CNN that he would protest during the national anthem indefinitely. The NAACP sent a letter to Goodell demanding new protections for outspoken athletes like Kaepernick. More than 1,000 protesters gathered in New York outside the NFL’s Park Avenue headquarters in support of the unemployed quarterback.

“For nearly a year, here was Colin Kaepernick talking about racism and inequality,” Edwards said. “It was like the mask was pulled off at Charlottesville. People watched and thought, ‘My god, Kaepernick’s right.’”

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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/03/colin-kaepernick-nfl-martyr-215572