The 49ers quarterback Sunday said he would continue his protest, with San Francisco’s next game coming at San Diego Thursday in a pre-season match against the Chargers.
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Moreover, my hope is that Kaepernick, Abdul-Jabbar and many others extend their protests to expose the dangers that every National Football League player faces from brain damage and the NFL’s insidious campaign to cover it up.
But Kaepernick won support from two of the most respected elder statesmen of American sport, Abdul-Jabbar and Brown, longtime civil rights advocates.
Colin Kaepernick’s sitting protest of the national anthem has ignited a firestorm of controversy in a way that reflects the age of internet. The basketball legend used Kaepernick’s own words from his press conference last weekend.
“One of the ironies of the way some people express their patriotism is to brag about our freedoms, especially freedom of speech, but then brand as unpatriotic those who exercise this freedom to express dissatisfaction with the government’s record in upholding the Constitution”, he went on.
But this week the Washington Post provided op-ed space to Abdul-Jabbar to weigh in on the controversy swirling around National Football League player Colin Kaepernick’s decision to remain seated during the playing of the USA national anthem at the start of a game last weekend. “And that’s something that needs to change”. “That’s not happening. People are dying in vain because this country isn’t holding their end of the bargain up, as far as giving freedom and justice, liberty to everybody”. “And it’s not happening for all right now”.
Although no one will argue that Ali’s protest of the Vietnam War and subsequent ban from boxing was as courageous an act as any we’ve seen from a professional athlete, it’s ridiculous to assume all protest must occur on that level, or that Rauf doing the same thing would accomplish as much. Abdul-Jabbar also mentioned U.S. Olympic athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their black-gloved fists in protest of the treatment of people of color after receiving their medals in the 1968 Olympics.
Kaepernick is bi-racial.
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You can read the rest of Abdul-Jabbar’s editorial here.
