As the 2018 NFL season fast approaches, the conversation has shifted back to the NFL, free speech, police brutality, race relations and kneeling. Almost as commonplace as the anthem itself, anthem protests have continued to drive a wedge between football fans and players alike. With NFL ratings declining 10 percent in the regular season and 16 percent in the playoffs in 2017, the league and its employees have a long way to go.
Plenty of attention has been given to the cause and those who started it. Recent reports have Colin Kaepernick — the poster boy for the anthem-kneeling movement — turning down what amounted to a $7 million offer to become the Denver Broncos backup QB (absurd money for a No. 2). Perhaps it’s time we focus on players with whom police brutality and racial inequality resonates deeper with based on their own real life experience. Players like Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch and Denver Broncos linebacker and Las Vegas’s own, Brandon Marshall.
No offense to Kap, but he lived a pretty darned privileged life as the biracial adopted son of the well-to-do vice president of operations for Hilmar Cheese Company. He grew up in a city where 0.9 percent of the population was African-American. He wasn’t ducking drive-bys and gang violence on a daily basis. He was enjoying the life as big man on campus at Pittman High School. It would suffice to say, Kap has never really worried about where his next meal would come from, or if he’ll survive to see the “ripe old age” of 18.
Let’s be clear, his perceived privileged upbringing doesn’t take away from his message or the cause he knelt for. It is a positive thing Kap became socially aware. I just feel it’s about time we put the focus on the players who grew up knowing gun violence, police brutality and racial strife. Lynch, for example, grew up Oakland, Calif. Marshall attended Cimarron-Memorial High School here in Vegas.
Cimarron has a 56 percent graduation rate and 79 percent of the student body is of minority descent. Oakland’s violent crime rate was stuff of legend during Lynch’s youth. In recent years, new police deescalation policies have reduced use-of-force incidents involving officers from 1,244 to 309 over the past five years. Perhaps Oakland is listening to Lynch’s non-verbal cry for justice.
“Most people told me growing up that I would either be dead or in jail by the age of 18. I have friends that didn’t make it to 18,” said Lynch back in 2014. “I’ve got homeboys now that have been in jail since they was 16.”
Marshall dealt with domestic violence at a young age. He, and his older brother and sister, were raised by his mother. His father rarely came around, and when he did, he was abusive towards Marshall’s mom.
“We had a bad situation,” Marshall said. “So we had to run from him because he was breaking into the house, and we had to stay in a shelter for a while until he turned himself in.”
Comparing the stories, one wonders why it’s Kap who gets all the publicity. How come the media doesn’t focus on Lynch, Marshall or any one of the NFL’s star who have experienced such heartbreak first-hand. Kap gets the awards, the interviews, and the Man of the Year honors. Lynch rides the BART home from games, and still hangs in the same neighborhood he grew up in.
As the 2018 season kicks off, it’s high time the media, fans, and owners focus on the what has driven players to the point of protest. Instead of crying about anthem respect, or calling our police officers “pigs,” it’s time for both sides to shut up and listen — to EVERYONE. The stories from Lynch, Marshall, or any player directly affected by violence and racial inequality, are too important to ignore because we’re simply too busy shouting about how we treat a song that took more than a century after it was written to become relevant in the first place.
A flag can be replaced. A song can be re-written. A human cannot be brought back from an early and tragic death. How easily we equate all three as equal points of outrage.
My opinions on the anthem protests are irrelevant. My biggest concern now sits with people who are willing to ignore legitimate issues in our country because they feel necessary protests disrespects an object, in this case our flag, or they feel supporting our police equates to support of institutional racism. The American flag and its anthem have become a false idol in this nation, taking on more importance than the deaths of young minorities and our public servants who don the badge.
Let’s take the 2018 season and focus on these individual stories and get to the core of what is keeping our divided nation from becoming great. We don’t need a late-night all-caps tweet from our Commander in Chief to tell us human life is less important than a fabric, a song, or a symbol. This is something we should just know.
Life is too fragile. It’s high time we all figure out a way to reach a solution that allows these athletes to stand up from kneeling on their own accord instead of threatening them with punishment and whatnot when they don’t. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that a better end game than making threats?
There’s a reason these players feel this is the right thing to do. If more of us listened, instead of responding with our own own elevated voices, perhaps we could find the common ground these protests are hoping to accomplish in a manner that exudes unconditional love, peace and harmony for all.
