https://medium.com/@heyryanbailey/white-guy-explainer-colin-kaepernicks-protest-e64f6b73c8a9Quote
Why the heck is Donald Trump talking about Colin Kaepernick? And why does it matter what white NFL players do about it?
This is part of an ongoing series of educational essays for white guys, by a white guy. Women, LGBTQ+, and people of color should not bear the responsibility of educating privileged white guys on the basics of social justice. The goal of these explainers is to give a basic context and framework for which white dudes new to these subjects can achieve a greater understanding of what’s happening, and why it’s important.
WHAT IS TRUMP DOING?
Many people were taken aback when Donald Trump made his incendiary comments targeting Colin Kaepernick at a campaign rally, and it might seem difficult to understand why Trump chooses to attack an NFL player for a non-violent protest. A redditor wrote:
Why is he fucking wrong on every goddamn thing he comments on?
Holy shit. Its like he analyzes a situation. Picks the worst, most ignorant position and runs with it.
Is he just a massive fucking troll?
I’ll start with an excerpt from the brilliant, searing piece Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote earlier this month, “The First White President”:
“Race is an idea, not a fact,” the historian Nell Irvin Painter has written, and essential to the construct of a “white race” is the idea of not being a nigger. Before Barack Obama, niggers could be manufactured out of Sister Souljahs, Willie Hortons, and Dusky Sallys. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake of something more potent — an entire nigger presidency with nigger health care, nigger climate accords, and nigger justice reform, all of which could be targeted for destruction or redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white.
Simply through the act of being democratically elected President, Barack Obama wounded the foundational premise of the American power structure: legitimized white supremacy. In one fell swoop, he unsettled a tradition built over hundreds of years — the comfort and implicit security of the white’s place above the African-American. Racism was no less of an institutional problem before Obama became president, but he severely aggravated the implicit racial bias in many conservative Americans (and self-identified liberals, for that matter.) This wellspring of resentment had been bubbling beneath the surface, and Obama’s ascent to the highest office in the land unearthed it completely.
Pat Buchanan, unfortunately for him, was a man ahead of his time. He recognized the impending culture war for a White America in the early 90s, when a demand for equality began to grow more powerful after the relative cooling period post-Civil Rights Movement (or to characterize it differently, a backlash and white, gender-normative aggression hellbent on rebuilding white supremacy) in the 70s and 80s. Blessed by a more opportune moment, Donald Trump has grabbed onto that heritage with both hands. He understands this white fear and resentment on a fundamental level, has an uncanny prescience in how to exploit it, and the complete lack of shame and decency required to execute the necessary tactics.
To put it bluntly, the NFL has for the past several decades solidified an organizational structure and purpose that harvested the work of black bodies, for the benefit of white entertainment. That’s not a catch-all rule, but with a large majority of players being black and audience members being white, that’s how it is. Not to mention the overwhelming majority of staff, coaches, and owners are white (there are no black owners, and only two are of color).
White people telling black people what to do, for white people to watch and enjoy. The black people get paid, of course, but does that not sound eerily familiar to you? That’s why the draft makes me so goddamn uncomfortable, the way they talk about these black men’s bodies is SO MUCH like chattel slavery, despite what the intentions may be.
So, we have a sport that is the most strongly identified as “American”, with a largely white audience — one that skews more conservative than fans of say, the NBA, or MLB. Then, we have all this controversy over a black man, a player, a guy whom traditionally has been expected to shut up and use his body to entertain, but there’s a problem: this black man won’t shut up. This black man won’t get in line, and do what he’s told.
The reason I am drawing these historical connotations is that Kaepernick has become a symbolic stand-in for many things that Trump’s base feels, but does not fully realize in a conscious way. Kaepernick has become a symbol for the seizure of power by ethnic minorities. You people used to shut up and be satisfied with living second-tier lives, and even though we gave them their damn voting rights and all that marching was supposed to be over they still won’t stop being so loud with their complaining and now this n***** won’t even let me enjoy my damn Sunday watchin my damn game without whining about how unfair the world is, like I’m “privileged”, like I don’t work hard, like he thinks I got it so easy.
These aren’t necessarily thoughts those who are enthralled by Trump’s rhetoric are consciously having, it’s just a general underlying sentiment that has been programmed into them, from birth: through their entire lives they have been raised in thousands of ways to believe that they are entitled to certain things that racial minorities are not, even if it was never framed that way. And now they can’t work, they can’t pay their bills, they can’t move up in the world, and now they can’t even relax and watch a ball game. That’s what Kaepernick represents: a seizure by ethnic minorities of an enormous luxury white people have — being able to ignore the struggles of the oppressed. It is an invasion of a space that many white people treasure, and the fact this privilege is being revoked by a guy whose traditional role has been to shut up and play is deeply triggering.
The thing many people still get wrong about the election is that Donald Trump was never a weak candidate. Hillary lost to arguably the worst person to ever run for president in a general election, but she lost to an incredibly savvy, strong candidate. A man who easily destroyed the entirety of the modern Republican Party’s leadership. A man who led (and continues to lead) the media around by the nose, continually dictating the story that bogarts the majority of coverage and conversation. A man who can get away with saying disgusting thing after disgusting thing, because the persona he has crafted over decades has a built-in heightened reality that makes nothing feel truly serious. To borrow a phrase from Sarah Kendzior, there is a grey area between moron and mastermind, and not enough people get that Trump occupies that space. When it comes to fostering white resentment through a capture of the media narrative, Trump is much closer to mastermind than he is moron.
Racism is like a disease we haven’t built up enough antibodies for, and Trump has an extremely keen sensibility about how to inflame the disease and unlock these buried prejudices. It’s a culture war, plain and simple. And Kaepernick is now the next target.
2. WHY DO WHITE PLAYERS NEED TO DO ANYTHING?
Another comment from reddit, this time from someone who maybe is a little less sympathetic and understanding to what’s happening:
Racial identity politics are a cancer and destroying our nation.
Who gives a fuck about the color of whos doing it
That’s a great question! Indeed, if it’s a problem that is primarily affecting people of color, why does it matter if white people take a stand?
Well, it has to do with the power dynamics that enable oppression. Oppression can only exist when there are oppressors subjugating the oppressed. So, in order to change the power structures that enable that oppression, it has to come in part from the cooperation of the oppressors.
This concept, the realignment of power structures through a mutually-achieved understanding, is called praxis. A canonical standard in the practice of social justice is a book called Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. He defines Praxis in this manner:
Functionally, oppression is domesticating. To no longer be prey to its force, one must emerge from it and turn upon it. This can be done only by means of the praxis: reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it.
Praxis is education (reflection) that enlightens and allows understanding of what is happening, and through that understanding, directs it towards action. In this case, Kaepernick took the step to enable the reflection, and through that reflection other NFL players who might not have done anything take action to allow a greater cultural reflection, something that educates and allows a furthering of understanding throughout the country. From the players achieving praxis, the fans can too.
So how does praxis manifest itself, and what is the role of the oppressor? What does one do when you understand that you, as a white person, are part of the oppressor?
Discovering himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed. Rationalizing his guilt through paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while holding them fast in a position of dependence, will not do. Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is in solidarity; it is a radical posture. If what characterizes the oppressed is their subordination to the consciousness of the master, as Hegel affirms, true solidarity with the oppressed means fighting at their side to transform the objective reality which has made them these “beings for another”. The oppressor is in solidarity with the oppressed only when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with, deprived of their voice, cheated in the sale of their labor — when he stops making pious, sentimental, and individualistic gestures and risks an act of love. True solidarity is found only in the plenitude of this act of love, in its existentiality in its praxis. To affirm that men and women are persons and as persons should be free, and yet to do nothing tangible to make this affirmation a reality, is a farce.
Yikes, that’s kinda dense — what does it mean? Well, basically it means that you can’t undo oppression exclusively through the work of the oppressed. That makes sense right? If all that oppressed peoples needed to do was will themselves out of oppression, it wouldn’t exist. So it needs to be done together. Only through the work of both black people (the oppressed) and white people (the oppressor) can we change the structure of our society from one that enables oppression through things like a biased criminal justice system that targets black people through both police and prosecutorial force, to a system that treats all with equality. A system that gives everyone a fair shot and equal treatment.
However, this will never happen unless white people start taking a stand for what’s right. That’s why white players need to kneel too, or else it’s just another cry for help from the oppressed peoples. When they both do it, it’s a relationship bound by the desire for progress. This relationship begins a process, from which true freedom for all can be achieved. White NFL players taking a knee won’t solve racism in America, but it’s the type of action that’s required for that to ever happen.
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