Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick figures on the middle of the story, although he is only one participant in a wealthy heritage of athletic activism. The creator begins with Paul Robeson, who started his profession at Rutgers with letters in soccer, observe, baseball, and basketball. “Sports activities had put him on the nationwide radar,” writes Steele, “however his many different pursuits all through segregated America had saved him there.” A part of the worth Robeson paid for his activism was the lack of his passport, as occurred to boxing nice Muhammad Ali as he refused induction into the navy. Steele notes that Kaepernick’s protest started not by taking a knee however just by refusing to face for the nationwide anthem, which could have gone neglected had a reporter not requested about it; taking a knee added urgency to the difficulty whereas costing Kaepernick a spot on the roster. “The very nature of his protest, after all, lent itself to categorizing the reactions alongside racial strains,” writes Steele. Many Black athletes got here to his protection, equivalent to Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whereas many White athletes insisted that Kaepernick was dishonoring the nation by his actions. But race isn’t a monolith. As Steele writes, Tiger Woods has made a protracted profession by going alongside to get alongside, palling round with Donald Trump—one in all Kaepernick’s most livid detractors—in his satan’s cut price. On the time, “the bar of expectations for Woods was primarily on the ground.” There it stays, whereas, Steele predicts, simply because the nation got here round to accepting Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’ raised fists on the 1968 Olympics, in 50 years, Kaepernick will probably be commemorated as a warrior for civil rights.
