On a deep personal level, I don’t like how Colin Kaepernick is using his stardom for social protest. Most of us don’t like to have someone else hold a mirror up to us to show our flaws. In doing so, Kaepernick is trying to prod us into doing something we would rather not acknowledge or even think about.
Most of us tend to protect ourselves by looking past the everyday societal reflections we encounter without ever stopping to really look at them–mostly out of fear of how we will see ourselves.
So we go on with our daily lives, unchanged, none the wiser.
By kneeling in protest, Colin Kaepernick reminds us that he is more than just an X or an O on someone’s fantasy team or in a playbook.
When Colin Kaepernick’s rises from his protest, he invokes the poignant imagery of Maya Angelou’s prophetic poem, “I’ll Rise”:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
–Maya Angelou
Had Kaepernick just been an average fan kneeling down in the stands during the Anthem, his actions probably would have gone completely unnoticed by the news media.
But he happens to be a professional quarterback who plays on one of our biggest stages. When he steps beyond society’s model of its traditional sports-heroes, he is demonized by social critics and that, of course, makes news.
Sometimes, our society needs to be prodded into movement. Is this one of those times? Will Kaepernick’s example bring about great change in our society? One needs only to remember that long before the news media had brought national attention to Rosa Parks’s refusal to move to the back of the bus, there had been many previous civil disobedient incidents that had garnered little or no news coverage.
For now, Kaepernick’s protest has raised a national awareness. Will it fade from view becoming a historical footnote when the news media turns its sights to the upcoming presidential election?
Afterwards, won’t most of us just want to slip back in to our comfortable sanctuary of living our daily lives and not looking too deeply in our own reflections? Or will the news media just wait for another future news cycle to cover the next Colin Kaepernick?
Mr. Laase may be contacted at GMLaase@aol.com
