Colin Kaepernick Will Never Play an Nfl Game Again

Colin Kaepernick: A cultural star fast turning into a global icon

Updated 0747 GMT (1547 HKT) September 10, 2018

(CNN)No i had noticed Colin Kaepernick sitting on a demote every bit the American national anthem rang out during a pre-season match on August 16, 2016. No questions were asked, no objections raised.

There was no indication that the quarterback would become America's most polarizing sports star. Maybe it was because the then-injured Kaepernick was non wearing his San Francisco 49ers compatible on that summer night in Houston.

Six days later, at a home game with the Denver Broncos, Kaepernick was still injured, however protesting, nevertheless fans, journalists, the 49ers, the NFL and its owners were still unaware a storm was brewing.

Simply on August 26, afterwards a game against the Green Bay Packers, a reporter looked closer at a pic of the 49ers and noticed Kaepernick sitting alone nigh the coolers as everyone else effectually him stood while the canticle played.

Questions were asked. Word spread. Kaepernick became the most talked about athlete in America. A villain to some, a hero to others.

"I am not going to stand up up to evidence pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour," Kaepernick, so 28, told NFL.com'due south Steve Wyche, the man who bankrupt the story.

"To me, this is bigger than football, and information technology would be selfish on my function to look the other way.

"At that place are bodies in the street and people getting paid get out and getting away with murder."

Rising against injustice

This was a star quarterback in America'due south most popular sports league. A blackness man with a black biological father and a white biological female parent, adopted past white parents who raised him in the predominantly white northern Californian town of Turlock, drawing attention to police brutality.

It was non, he would reiterate, a protest against the military or the flag, though that message would become lost over the next two years, drowned out past the ire and the adulation.

A tiny ripple apace built into a wave which aimed to sweep down the walls of oppression. From San Francisco to Seattle, from the NFL to the National Women'south Soccer League, from elite sports stars to higher kids, there were many who wanted to strike out with Kaepernick confronting injustice.

For the 49ers' quaternary preseason lucifer Kaepernick took to 1 knee joint during the anthem; his teammate Eric Reid joined him.

On the same night Seattle Seahawks' Jeremy Lane sat for the anthem. Days later Megan Rapinoe was the first white athlete to take the knee, doing so before a professional soccer match, and on September 9 Denver Broncos' Brandon Marshall became the offset NFL role player to do it in a regular-season game.

Critics emboldened, supporters inspired

Two years on, Kaepernick is unemployed subsequently opting out of his contract in March 2017 before the 49ers could release him and has largely maintained a public silence over the terminal 12 months. But he is more than powerful than he has ever been.

Every bit the new NFL flavor begins, and the ruling over anthem protests remains unclear, the country's most influential American footballer, the symbol of a movement, isn't anywhere about the pitch.

But he returned to the spotlight this week when information technology was revealed Kaepernick, a Nike athlete since 2011 but not featured in its campaigns since his departure from the NFL, would be the affiche boy for company's 30th anniversary Only Do It ad.

With a black and white movie of the kneeling quarterback-turned-activist superimposed with the nine words, "Believe in something. Fifty-fifty if it means sacrificing everything," Kaepernick has returned to the forefront of public debate. He didn't take to say a discussion, or brand a single play.

Over these last few days his supporters have been inspired, his critics emboldened.

Nike trainers and socks accept been burnt, the hashtag #boycottnike was trending on Twitter through much of Tuesday. US President Donald Trump, who last yr described the NFL protesters as "sons of bitches" and whose frequent comments on the issue has fueled the flames of national debate, said Nike's ad sent a "terrible bulletin."

Kaepernick and Reid, who like his former teammate remains unsigned, received ovations at the Us Open last week when they were shown on the big screen. Erstwhile CIA managing director John Brennan lauded the quondam 49er, and by using Kaepernick Nike -- a multibillion-dollar company whose interest lies in selling sportswear -- has fabricated it articulate whose side information technology is on. They are non with the President on this.

Whether the majority of the NFL's white, bourgeois billionaire owners like information technology or not, Kaepernick is the face up of the league which the player himself believes blacklisted him.

A global icon

The man who would spend his fourth dimension time equally a role player quietly attending lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, to learn about black history is a cultural star, fast turning into a global icon.

"He'southward monumentally more famous than he e'er was as a histrion," Nate Boyer, a former American footballer and Green Beret, tells CNN Sport.

"He's probably one of the biggest pop civilization icon at least out of sport that there is and it'south all due to the demonstrations, information technology's nothing to practise with football game really."

Boyer has been closely associated with the protest since the beginning, writing an open letter to Kaepernick that was published in the Army Times, which culminated in a face-to-face word between the 2 men. During that meeting, Kaepernick was persuaded by Boyer to kneel for the national anthem rather that sit as it showed, in Kaepernick's words, "more respect for the men and women that fight for this country."

Boyer admits he did not think the issue would become every bit big as information technology has, but urges Americans "to be smarter" and calls for the man who is at present known for a simple, silent gesture to be more than vocal.

"To really believe that one-half of our country is stupid and your side has all the answers and the other half doesn't take a clue is ignorant," he says, answering one of hundreds of questions he has been asked on Kaepernick this week, though the pair have non spoken for a while.

"I want to become back to unity in this country. I call up Colin can exist a big role of bringing us together, but it's going to have him beingness vocal, existence involved with people on both sides of an issue and reaching beyond.

"I know Colin can exercise that because he did information technology with me, so he's capable of that. More Americans demand to see that because we don't see it, nosotros only come across reactions to 1 side of the story. I would continue to encourage him to be part of that."

'The Muhammad Ali of his generation'

Effectually the fourth dimension Kaepernick met Boyer, the role player was as much a office of the public discourse as the Presidential election, making headlines with his words and actions.

He received death threats, his teammates voted him the winner of the Len Eshmont honor "for inspirational and courageous play," Time magazine put him on the comprehend kneeling adjacent to the words "The Perilous Fight," and before this year Amnesty International honored Kaepernick with its ambassador of censor award.

Described every bit "the Muhammad Ali of this generation" by civil rights activist Harry Edwards, Kaepernick promised to donate $1 meg of his bacon to various organizations and continued to speak out, saying that "cops are being given paid leave for killing people. That's non right. That'south not right by anyone'due south standards."

But, aside from social media posts, the one-time 49er has been quiet since the end of 2016. He has not spoken to the media since he filed his grievance against the NFL, accusing the league'due south owners of conspiring to keep him out considering of his protests.

The NFL has attempted to have the instance thrown out, but last month the arbitrator determined that Kaepernick'due south lawyers had unearthed enough credible evidence to let the instance to proceed to a total hearing. It will no incertitude keep Kaepernick in the news during the NFL season.

There are no shades of gray when it comes to Kaepernick. Anybody has an opinion. Even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, former President of Iran, tweeted this week: "... unfortunately over again @Kaepernick7 is not on a NFL roster. Even though he is one of the all-time quarterbacks in the league."

Though his grade dipped since his starring role against the New England Patriots in 2012 which led the 49ers to the playoffs and, ultimately, the SuperBowl, statistics suggests Kaepernick is notwithstanding good enough for the NFL. He threw sixteen touchdowns and 4 interceptions in 2016, while in that November he had the best outset-one-half functioning by a 49ers quarterback since Steve Young in 1997.

Much has happened to the young player who gave rise to "Kaepernicking" during the 2012 season, a reference to the human activity of kissing his tattooed biceps to gloat a touchdown. Those tattoos led ane columnist to compare him to a prison inmate, his first brush with beingness the crusade of fury.

A worldwide platform

Of class, Kaepernick is not the get-go black athlete to make a stand against social injustice and suffer every bit a consequence.

Craig Hodges was a sharpshooter for the Chicago Bulls and outspoken on a number of issues, from poverty in the black community to the Gulf War.

He turned upward to the White House's congratulatory ceremony in a full-length dashiki with an eight-page letter intended for President George Bush. He was cut by the Bulls that offseason and never played in the NBA again.

John Carlos and Tommie Smith shook the world at the 1968 Olympics by raising their fists on the podium during the American anthem. They received expiry threats on their return to America and were suspended from the U.s.a. rails team. Old broadcaster Brent Musberger, when writing a columnist for the Chicago American, described the Olympians as "a pair of dark-skinned stormtroopers."

And at that place is "The Greatest," Muhammad Ali, who refused to fight in Vietnam. The heavyweight champion was stripped of his crown and reduced to making a paid appearance at a boat bear witness in his hometown of Louisville, his passport taken abroad, along with his ability to make a living.

In the absence of football, the Nike bargain gives Kaepernick a worldwide platform and such a major endorsement will likely requite other athletes farther strength to stand by their convictions in an age where the country'south most commercially viable stars are in open opposition to the President. Athletes perhaps have more power than they realize.

"What this might mean is that there is space for athletes to be part of this chat nigh race and social justice without having to risk their endorsements and I think that'due south important," Professor Louis Moore, associate professor of history at Michigan's Thou Valley State University, tells CNN Sport.

"I hope information technology gives companies the same confidence to back up athletes too. That they volition see that maybe having an athlete who is politically engaged isn't bad."

But Kaepernick's vocalism could have been louder, says Moore.

"Kap stayed silent for a year. He could've taken advantage of 24 hours news, social media, but he stayed silent," he explains.

"Ali, he stayed agile, he did tours, he was on the news, he did radio. Kap stayed silent for a yr. In that sense, he has an ability to have a bigger platform because of social media but he didn't use it.

"But he'll always be in that conversation about those central figures, Ali, Smith ... He's a office of history, in a good way too."

Message louder than ever

Over the last two years Kaepernick'south conduct has not been without fault: he has worn socks featuring cartoon pigs wearing police uniform, a t-shirt featuring former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and was heavily criticized for revealing that he did non vote in the 2016 election. But he has been successful in affecting the national dialogue.

"He forced us to have a chat about race and racism and police force brutality and he forced people to wrestle with this reality that these things be in America," says Moore.

"Whenever a black athlete speaks out it highlights bug. That'south his affect. Information technology's a chat that'southward been going on for two years. Information technology's going to be an ongoing chat. This is where nosotros're at equally a nation.

"Kaepernick will exist part of that conversation for a while considering of Nike and too because the NFL has started. That conversation around criminal justice and police brutality is front end and center in America right now, not only considering of Kapernick but considering we have cameras and we meet all this stuff all the fourth dimension on social media, on the news, and that'south something nosotros have to deal with equally a land."

At the start of his protestation, Kaepernick said: "I am not looking for approving. I have to stand up up for people that are oppressed. If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is correct."

The football has been taken away, the game goes on without him, but his bulletin is louder than ever.

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Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/07/sport/colin-kaepernick-protest-taking-the-knee-nate-boyer-spt-intl/index.html

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