It gets pretty confusing with so many pieces being written about the statements made by NFL players and teams. I read somewhere that in the old days of televised sport, players weren't even present on the field during the anthem, however athletics and sport used to be even more politicized (than today) and athletes have made various bold and tepid political statements throughout the last 150 years.
The actualities of the NFL (an elaborate, but perhaps democraticly balanced, cartel) employment system simply don't work as simply in real life as they do in the head of someone as high on their own privilege as the current President of the United States: an owner won't simply fire a player for kneeling during the national anthem, regardless of the political context, the other owners, the nfl organization, and the players, would be unlikely to not retaliate in various critical ways. A more realistic thing would be what we've seen with Kaepernick, where such a player can't get a new contract, but a player under contract is unlikely to be fired for these activities. The steepest consequence i can imagine, based on my experience following sports, would be some sort of fine levied by the team over each incident of 'misconduct'.
And it is not at all clear why any org would level a fine against any such African-American players because... to me, it is pretty obvious that it is kind of like this person's response?
I really don't know the legal details, but remember that case where people wanted to kick richard spencer (really explicit white spuremacist and neo-nazi) out of a gym in Virginia:
"Let’s get a few facts straight. The majority of employees of Old Town Sport&Health are women and/or people of color, whom “Dick” Spencer has repeatedly asserted (on his Twitter feed for example,
https://twitter.com/RichardBSpencer) to be inferior to his kind who are entitled to rule over us because we are not christian, white or have a vagina. (Also..fuck him again. With a giant strap-on and no lube.)
In my book, this is a clear case of a hostile environment being perpetrated by the general manager, who is an indifferent, asinine white feller who demanded that I remove my “Puck Trump” hat a few weeks back while asserting the “right” of this Nazi to join our gym some two months ago. Priorities anyone? He says that “corporate is working on this.” What a load of rubbish. He is the GM. He has the right to kick out folks…like me for telling a neo Nazi to go to hell…but not the neo Nazi, despite the hostile environment this creates for his employees who know who is..and most do.
Would any of you who are lawyers be willing to represent the trainers and employees of this gym–many of whom I love like family–on a percentage of win basis? These trainers are not well paid and they need this job. But this is high order bullshit. No one should have to put up with this just because they lack the resources to hire a lawyer.
And the General Manger of Old Town Sport&Health is ultimately responsible for ensuring a safe, nonthreatening work environment for his employees. By allowing this savage into our gym, he has undermined his own position. He even asked one of the African American trainers to meet with him (I assume 'him' refers to richard spencer-myzozoa)! Un-fucking-believable."
So yeah, I don't have a law degree, but I find it really hard to see how an owner can expect to fire an African American player for making a statement about racism in America without risking creating some type of legal conundrum due to how that act effects the work environment for other employees. And there is a whole issue of the players' contract with the NFL and how the players' speech is protected in that contract: for example the players may have rights to express themselves in their contract, I have not checked, and the example here is a case of sponsorship: suppose a player is sponsored by pepsi and pepsi decides to change their logo to a 'black lives matter' message, even if the NFL didn't like it, I'm p sure the players have some sort of rights about how they present themselves simply due to considerations of sponsorship.
Some thoughts, maybe someone more familiar with the NFL can point out flaws in the assumptions I'm making because I'm sure it is more complicated than this and that I am wrong about many important details.
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I've been seeing some erroneous revisions of history in regards to the
#taketheknee stuff. So I'm gonna be a bit thorough instead of just making sweeping claims about an involved history.
When Kaepernick took a knee in 2016, his gesture directly pointed to the police violence that black people face, state sanctioned. It was in response to Ferguson, Baltimore, and greater, all of the injustices and violence that black folks face in this country. Let's be clear- though there were much fewer players who joined him in taking that initial knee, there WAS SOLIDARITY! And it extended beyond the NFL. To suggest anything other is to deny the solidarity shown by the women of the WNBA, like the Indiana Fever who, as a team, all took a knee during this time, the Minnesota Lynx who did as well. Megan Rapinoe of the USWNT kneeled before a game. In the NFL, Kapernick kneeled with two of his teammates- players on the Eagles and other teams kneeled and raised fists. This level of solidarity never happened in the NFL and it still hasn't there's too many dynamics and bodies, too much racism. But still, let's not act like Kaepernick was the sole hero- we don't have to make him the hero.
Now, other teams at this time, like the Seahawks, chose not to kneel but to 'lock arms' in a show of unity. It was this kind of choice which was a joke - why not just kneel as well right? Then it moved to white players putting hands on their black players shoulders' as they raised a fist, and all of that was very empty.
At the start of this NFL season, Michael Bennett of the Seahawks continued explicitly, Kaepernick's protest, by sitting on the bench during the anthem. A player on the Chiefs did the same, I'm forgetting who. Then Trump made his comments about the protests, and it prompted the #taketheknee hashtag, where many many players sat, kneeled, or locked arms during the anthem. Sure- it was Trump's comments that prompted them to take this action- perhaps they would have never done it otherwise. But we cannot just assign this action as a rejection of Trump. Forget the players standing and locking arms- that's a joke. The black players kneeling and sitting are continuing the message of Kaepernick, whether they explicitly state it as eloquently as he did in press game conferences or not.
A necessary intersection seems possible to think about and interrogate. Sure, boycott the NFL. But it's only one of many institutions that functions this way. What about the NCAA where all of the players in the NFL played 1-5 years generating billions of dollars of revenue for white owned academic institutions that they never saw a cent of? What if it wasn't just sports where this objectification of the black body and its labor occur? What about all the black people in this country who have to work two jobs when it's not enough. The black folks who have to work twice as hard because their white boss thinks them uncivil and incapable?
Kaepernick's protest called attention indirectly to this objectification. It is seen most starkly perhaps at the level of sports, where the entertainment generated by the black body is always other, alien, monster. His act interrupted that silent acceptance. We have seen what happens when black folks refuse to do this work on the large scale (The Missouri football team). Look at how that protest shook the white owned academy and brought a halt to everything- that fool Wolfe resigned. Idk, there's much more to say, let's stop with the ignorant hot takes tho."