Citizen Kaepernick
20th November 2017 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
This just in: Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, the same dude with the cornrolls and afro who has been making trouble for decent white folks and refusing to stand for the national anthem because he is not happy about widespread social injustice, bigotry and police brutality, has been named GQ magazine’s “Citizen of the Year.”
With Kaepernick’s lawsuit against the NFL that charges the league with collusion for him being “whiteballed” out of an opportunity to sign with an NFL team after becoming a free agent still pending and sports fans allegedly still selling their season tickets and burning NFL merchandise, it’s a little hard to imagine how Kaepernick has gone from being treated like the Anti-Christ to being a Laudable Man of Principle and Courage.
Unless, of course, you consider that everything Colin Kaepernick said and did last season made perfect sense and that he was telling the truth about a racial climate in America that has proven to be openly hostile at times to people of color and in denial about its handling of Black, Brown and poor people’s constitutional rights.
“Colin also made it clear to us that he intended to remain silent,“ the GQ article says. “As his public identity has begun to shift from football star to embattled activist, he has grown wise to the power of his silence. It has helped his story go around the world. It has even provoked the ire and ill temper of Donald Trump.”
Eric Reid, an LSU alum and 49ers safety-turned-linebacker, continues to kneel to show his commitment to the cause Kaepernick drew attention to last season and in support of his former teammate, even after NFL players met with team owners and other league officials last month. Reid even knelt at the 49ers game that took place over the Veteran’s Day Weekend.
“My goal this year has been to get the narrative back on track,” Reid told GQ. “We started having communications with the NFL, and they said they’re going to help us make progress on these issues. But the next step is to get Colin back in the NFL. Because he’s the one that started this. I think we’re finally getting where me and Colin envision this going. Now it’s time for him to get back in the league.”
“We have to speak up for those who can’t do it for themselves,” Reid told The Associated Press last week in an article about Christian athletes who take a knee to raise awareness of social injustice and are criticized by other members of the faith. “My faith is ultimately what led me to start protesting and it’s what continues to drive me. Faith without works is dead. I feel like the past year before we started protesting, the Lord has prepped me for this moment.”
Rapper J. Cole told GQ that he was inspired by Kaepernick’s courage in speaking out so forcefully last fall and for having the courage of his convictions.
“It hit another level for me the second I learned he was taking a knee,” J. Cole told GQ. “And it wasn’t just that — it was when I saw the shit he was saying in the interviews when they pressed him about it. His answers were just so clear and potent. Like, right on point. And he wasn’t backing down. And he wasn’t afraid. He was just being honest. And it didn’t seem like he was looking for attention. It caught me off guard because, you know, nothing personally against him, I just didn’t know when I met him that the person with the biggest balls in sports would be him.”
J. Cole added that he is blown away by Kaepernick’s commitment to ending social injustice and how much the talented quarterback has been willing to sacrifice to raise awareness of an issue that many athletes and celebrities of color have pretended for many years not to see.
“You’re talking about a guy in his athletic prime, who’s lived his whole life dreaming about playing football at a level that millions of kids dream to get to,” J. Cole explained, “And in his first big season, he takes his team to within five yards of winning a Super Bowl. But then, at some point in time, he becomes conscious about what’s happening in the world. And suddenly something that he’s been doing blindly for his whole life — standing for the national anthem — now feels uncomfortable. Why? Because now it feels phony! It feels like, ‘Man, how can I stand for this thing when this country is not holding itself true to the principles it says it stands for? I feel like we’re lying.’ And look what happens to him. Had he not done that, this guy would be making millions of dollars right now. Period, point blank. And more important than the money, he was living his dream. He sacrificed his dream.”
Kaepernick’s girlfriend of three years, radio personality Nessa Diab, told GQ magazine that she is moved by his compassion and concern for those less fortunate and that the two of them share a passion and a commitment to fighting social injustice.
“Colin has always been helping people, he has always been involved, because he has empathy,” Diab told GQ. “Empathy was a reason why he was adopted: His parents — two of their children had passed away from heart defects. It’s why he helped so many young children with heart defects get proper care — he’s been doing that for years. I’m very fortunate that I have Colin next to me. It’s everything. We love each other, we care for each other, and we have to remind each other that, hey, we’re doing our part, we’re trying to make a difference.”
Papa John’s Pizza founder John Schnatter found himself scrambling to clean things up after posting a Tweet that vilified NFL players for their anthem protest.
“The NFL leadership has hurt Papa John’s shareholders,” Schnatter said several weeks ago. “The NFL has been a long and valued partner over the years. But we’re certainly disappointed that the NFL and its leadership did not resolve the ongoing situation to the satisfaction of all parties long ago. This should’ve been nipped in the bud a year and half ago.”
However, after a white supremacist publication declared Papa John’s as its official pizza, the owner quickly changed his tune and did what he could to distance the pizza chain from the alt-right.
“The statements made on our earnings call were describing the factors that impact our business and we sincerely apologize to anyone that thought they were divisive. That definitely was not our intention,” the company tweeted Tuesday.
“We believe in the right to protest inequality and support the players’ movement to create a new platform for change. We also believe together, as Americans, we should honor our anthem. There is a way to do both.
“We will work with the players and league to find a positive way forward. Open to ideas from all. Except neo-nazis — (expletive) those guys.”
Perhaps the real reason that so many folks are still enraged about the player protests is that these athletes who make a boatload of money for playing a sport have the audacity to think that they have the right to stand up for people who look like them and to hold up a mirror to White America during a time traditionally set aside as a way for the larger society to escape the realities of having to spend so much time, effort and energy to keep Black, Brown and poor people in “their place.”
How dare Black professional athletes who are paid a king’s ransom and treated like rock stars by everyone from law enforcement officers to blue-collar workers betray White America after all the ruling one percent has done for them and their bank accounts?
Talk about ungrateful and uppity.
It is worth noting that once a good slave goes bad, it is virtually impossible to get him or her to go back to being Stepin Fetchit, Amos N Andy or Uncle Remus.
As far as the GQ honor goes, give Kaepernick a little credit — unlike some materially wealthy and famous folks who didn’t grow up rich and had to work hard to achieve financial success, he has demonstrated time and again that he solidly possesses the courage of his convictions and has not been shy or apologetic about “walking the talk.”
One of the latest folks to weigh in on the subject was former Orleans Parish D.A. Harry Connick Sr., who certainly deserves a great deal of credit for New Orleans’ failure to respect or even acknowledge the constitutional rights of Black, Brown and poor people in the city accused of committing a crime.
“I sympathize with the mission of the demonstrating players, and have done so all of my life,” Connick, a World War II veteran, wrote in a letter to the editor that appeared in the Nov. 10 issue of The New Orleans Advocate.
Connick wrote the letter to defend Navy veteran John Well’s decision to turn down a People Choice Champion Award in order to protest Saints players’ decision to not stand for the national anthem at a football game in September.
Lest anyone question his commitment to justice and fairness, Connick cited his association with Black civil rights advocates and pioneers like Ernest “Dutch” Morial, the city’s first Black mayor, and Judge Israel Augustine, after whom the Orleans Parish Criminal Courthouse has been renamed.
Connick recalled how as an assistant U.S. Attorney, he prosecuted a number of police brutality cases, including one with Asst. U.S. Attorney Dutch Morial, and how he was involved as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice with the desegregation of public schools in New Orleans.
All of that is fine and dandy, but none of that excuses former Orleans Parish D.A. Harry Connick Sr. for the terror, trauma and injustice he heaped onto the backs of Black, Brown and poor people during his 29-year tenure as the city’s top prosecutor.
It was Connick’s administration that sent 16-year-old Shareef Cousin to death for the murder of a white Slidell resident in 1995 outside the Port of Call restaurant even though there was video footage of Cousin playing basketball at the Tremé Community Center and a key witness told police that she could not identify the killer because her vision was blurry. It was also discovered that Connick’s wily prosecutors hid key defense witnesses from Cousin’s attorneys by placing them in the D.A.’s Office during the trial.
New Orleans native Curtis Kyles was another of the Connick administration’s victims. He spent 11 years on death row after being wrongfully convicted in the murder of a woman in 1984. He finally gained his freedom in 1995 when the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office had withheld crucial exculpatory evidence that would have clearly proven that Kyles was not the murderer.
Jerome Morgan was 17 when he was arrested for a murder that occurred near a Sweet 16 party in New Orleans in 1993. He was wrongfully arrested and prosecuted and spent two decades behind bars serving a life-without-parole sentence. The Connick administration prosecuted Morgan despite evidence that showed he was still in the party when police arrived and complaints from several witnesses who said they were pressured by the authorities to identify Morgan as the killer. He was finally exonerated in 2016.
John Thompson spent 14 years on death row for a murder he did not commit, thanks to the Connick administration. When he was finally exonerated, a federal jury awarded him $14 million, $1 million for each year he spent on death row. But he never saw that money because current D.A. Leon Cannizzaro went to D.C. and told the U.S. Supreme Court that the City of New Orleans could not afford to pay it. So much for justice.
If Connick says he fought against police brutality and segregation in New Orleans, I’ll take him at his word, But none of that erases the hell his administration systematically doled out to Black men and boys in the local criminal justice system.
He simply may not be the best person to convince these athletes and others who feel as they do that their efforts to raise awareness of racial injustice and bigotry by refusing to stand for the national anthem is a bad thing.
Rather than try to control the minds, bodies and actions of Black athletes and people of color in general, the white masses in America should instead spend a little time trying to figure out why their sense of personhood and self-worth depends so heavily on the subjugation, exploitation, incarceration, criminalization, vilification and extermination of Black, Brown and poor people.
This article originally published in the November 20, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
