It was a stunning act, to be sure: Athletes would refuse to play in recognition of one more police shooting, that of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Blake was shot in the back some seven times the other day, retreating from police who had tried to taser him into compliance.
Amazingly, Blake survived. But he's paralyzed for life. The police said he had a knife on the driver's seat floor. How much of a threat that created is for speculation, since the police had vastly superior weapons and three children were in the car he tried to re-enter.
NBA players, most specifically the Milwaukee Bucks, about forty miles up the road, made a stand. They would not play their playoff game under these circumstances. They would protest yet another shooting of a black person by white police. Other teams followed suit.
It left the league in a difficult spot. Do they fine the players and take away part of their salaries? Do they penalize the Bucks a loss in the playoffs, where every game counts hugely? The Bucks, for their purposes, bravely did not care. They wanted the world to know that, with a team of mostly black players, they needed to show solidarity.
The games would be rescheduled. But what happens when this takes place again? Yet another postponement? Anything less would reduce the notoriety of the person at the other end of the police weapons. But the league will be ready the next time, you can be sure of that.
Jared Kushner, feckless son-in-law to 45, muttered something about taking the night off. You can interpret that racially or otherwise, since much of the league is made up of black players. He makes as much, if not more, than even the best paid of those players do, so he couldn't have been speaking for himself and his own work ethic.
But it was the follow-up that gained even more attention. The Milwaukee Brewers acted similarly. They, too, took the night off in solidarity and sympathy to Blake. That game, too, has been rescheduled. That league isn't as black as the NBA; but it has plenty of Hispanic players, too.
The impact of both stands wasn't as widespread and deep as it might have been. That's because those sports are important to some people, but not as vital, not as tribal, as football. Note that 45 did not complain all that much when baseball players took a knee at the start of their seasons. That's partly because so many of them did so. Bullies who can't single out the ones they pick on usually move on.
We will see, now, how the NFL reacts to the demonstrations that have taken place. It didn't support Colin Kaepernick when he took the kind of stand that turned out to be a forseer of present-day issues. Now that much has been made of it outside the sport, the NFL players are likely to demonstrate their own solidarity when that season begins soon.
Note that the owners aren't spouting off. Note that the commissioner isn't, either. Note that the Washington football team has had to change its name or lose a lot of money from the stadium management. The league is backing away from its hard-edged position. It says here that that's because the general support for 45 has diminished there, too. They, too, are beginning to see that there's nothing beyond the rhetoric and posturing. There's no there, there.
With white middle class support strewn throughout the NFL, the protest against Kaepernick reached an absurd peak. We will see first, if more players take a knee--I would be stunned if they didn't--and if there will be a chorus of boos or simply silence. I'm guessing the latter, since the publicity surrounding George Floyd and now other fatalities has reached an undeniable peak.
Because in a situation like this, it isn't the sports that have predominantly minority support that will gain the most significant attention. It's the ones with white following. Hockey would be another, perhaps more so because it has so few black players. When the NFL and NHL take a knee and do not get pushback, it means that culturally, it has come to be acceptable and more often repeated. If they choose not to play a particular weekend, that may finally get the attention of the powers that be.
A lot of this could have gone away three years ago, when Kaepernick first demonstrated. Very few NFL players joined him. When 45 got involved and few saw or accepted his shallowness at the time, it became a cause celebre, rather than an itch that had to be scratched. But two things kept going: the clear and obvious blackballing of Kaepernick when he became a free agent, and the repeated deaths of black people at the hands of white police.
So the NFL doubled down and proved Kaepernick right: The league has a racist tinge in its top, very white ownership. I seriously doubt that it will want to continue to scream bloody murder because someone wants to post a short, temporary protest that will make its mark but disturb none of the playing.
Pandemic aside, we will see what kind of impact all of this will cause. It may become moot, because I don't see the NFL lasting longer than about three weeks anyhow. All those twenty-something guys, many of whom are unmarried, with all that money, just sitting around in a bubble? Some will try to sneak out. Some is bound to bring the virus back in.
If I'm wrong, so much the better. The public is dying for something consistent, something it can count on. There is impatience in particular with the NFL; note that CBS, running new shows past us, very quickly flashes "Football Is Back."
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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