THE KAEPERNICK EFFECT

Take a knee, everyone, and start a revolution.

NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick did not act impulsively when, in 2016, he knelt down on one knee to protest police violence and racism. He had a long conversation with another NFL player and former Green Beret soldier, who suggested that the protest would be more visible and more meaningful than if Kaepernick simply refused to stand during the playing of the national anthem. “That was, it is safe to say now, a miscalculation,” writes Zirin, sports editor for the Nation. The year 2016 witnessed the rise of Donald Trump, “unrepentantly divisive and proudly bigoted,” who would go on to reveal his true racist colors the following year at Charlottesville; with Trump, a flood tide of White resentment and anti-Black acts would overwhelm the country. In response, as Zirin chronicles, players and protestors of many ethnicities emulated Kaepernick, sometimes courting significant trouble in doing so. These included a high school class of student athletes who collectively decided to take the knee in racially troubled Minneapolis, a cheerleader who acted alone in doing so, a Black student athlete in a mostly White community in New York who, appalled that the Confederate flag was being flown “as an all-purpose symbol of white supremacy,” launched a protest that caught on among young people: “I’m getting recognized for football,” he reasoned, “why can’t I get recognized for speaking?” Zirin closes his account, which is more in the way of vivid character sketches than anything driven by a governing thesis, with a conversation with John Carlos, who famously raised a fist in a Black Power salute at the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games and who sagely counsels, “Love thyself. Love thy neighbor. Set a precedent and let them know that we are not the negative force in society. We are the positive force.”

A thoughtful anecdotal study of protest in our time.