Taking a knee

July 5, 2016, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Alton Sterling was held down by the Baton Rouge Police Department who received a phone call from a homeless man in a dispute with Sterling. When the police showed up, Sterling was responsive and compliant and when he was told to get on the ground, he did so. A bystander filmed the entire thing and footage showed Sterling being pinned down by police, not moving at all. One of the officers saw a gun in Sterling’s pants and opened fired while the subject was motionless on the ground.  

July 17, 2014, Eric Garner from Staten Island, New York, is choked and killed by an police officer. The incident started when police got a lead that Garner was selling loose cigarettes without a license. This act of course is illegal, but as with every case I am about to mention, the issue comes from the way it was handled by the officer. The New York Police Department banned the use of chokeholds from their officers. Although this method is prohibited and is what ultimately killed Garner, Officer Daniel Pantaleo was not indicted and was set free.

At the beginning of the NFL football season, San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Colin Kaepernick chose to protest police brutality and racial discrimination by kneeling down rather than standing with his hand over his heart during the “National Anthem.” This had the nation up in arms and split over controversy surrounding his actions. The issues people have with the song though date back to the beginning in 1814 when it was written, but this issue has become more relevant with Kaepernick’s protest.

The kind of treatment that Eric Garner and Alton Sterling received is what athletes like Colin Kaepernick are protesting. Kaepernick currently has around 40 other pro-football players in silent protest with him. These numbers continue to grow every week and do not include other all-star athletes such as women’s soccer player Megan Rapinoe and even multiple high schools whose entire football teams and cheerleaders have joined this protest.

With such a growing protest at hand, what has people up in arms? The large majority of people who are against it are enraged by the fact that these athletes chose to protest America’s national anthem. They claim it disrespects the country and the nation’s heroes and veterans.

On Sept. 13, 1814, Francis Scott Key wrote the “Star Spangled Banner.” He wrote the poem in Maryland after witnessing Fort McHenry being bombarded by the British. After the failure of the British to successfully destroy the fort, Key saw the flag still waving proudly in the air and wrote this poem that was later set to music and adopted as our nation’s anthem. This is of course the story that most of our country’s super proud “patriots” want to stick to.

In reality, Key was a successful lawyer and slave owner in Maryland and an active Pro-Slavery advocate. He made a large amount of money prosecuting black individuals, because the more he sentenced to death, the more money he made. Key was not a self-proclaimed “racist,” he was just very pro-money and would do what he had to to make his dollars.  

The facts of the issue are being ignored, Key did not write the national anthem with people of different color in mind. He wrote it for and about white people. Remember the third verse of the song? No? That’s because it was removed from the anthem due to its celebration of the death of slaves.

“Their blood has wash’d out their foul footsteps pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,”

Key celebrates the death of slaves in the war and claims that they were pollution to the earth and that their death washed that pollution away. This poem resembles freedom, but only for white Americans. If the nation wants to see change, you need to see justice for these victims of oppression and profiling. In the past three years, not one police officer has been imprisoned for manslaughter despite video evidence. Most of them are still employed with their department and are still on the streets. Trayvon Martin, from the famous Martin v Zimmerman case was targeted because of his skin color, Garner was targeted because of his skin color. Alton Sterling, Michael Brown and Tamir Rice (a 12 year old child) are just a few names of black males who have been shot because police claimed they posed a threat without any real evidence. The badge police officers wear says “To serve and protect” not, “Shoot to kill.”

Oppression exists, discrimination exists, racism exists and influential people like  Kaepernick are exercising their right to protest. This protest is peaceful and requires nobody to be hurt or even worse, killed. We all remember the Dallas shooting a few months back. Five police officers were shot and killed by a man protesting oppression in the Dallas shooting. Now, in no way can anyone support or condone this kind of behavior — people were understandably very upset by this event — but you need to think about why it happened.

Just after the death of Sterling, the Dallas shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson, was upset about the treatment of black people by the police and everyone else. He took matters into his own hands and made the issue apparent and known. He shot 14 officers, killing 5 of them.  Kaepernick is protesting the exact same thing but he’s doing it Ghandi-Style, peacefully and without anyone being hurt. C’mon people, you can not have it both ways, there have been countless protests supporting the right to bear arms some violent, some not. This is showing that you are willing to fight to protect the constitution, so why not protect all of it?

Johnson has already proven that violence only leads to more violence and anger. Kaepernick has the right to protest for what he believes in, and we should applaud the fact that he chose the peaceful route. His methods have shown to be effective. He may not have everyone on his side at this time, but he at least has the nation’s attention, and that is the first step.  

Kaepernick would like to raise awareness of these issues. Everybody is entitled to to their own beliefs and opinions (because of the constitution) and as Americans, no one should judge nor discriminate others based on belief. This is why a stand needs to be taken and everyone should take a second and look at the Kaepernick controversy and try and see both sides. There are real problems in this world that need to be addressed. You don’t have to agree with everything Kaepernick stands for, but please applaud him for his methods and the way he is exercising his first amendment rights like a true proud patriot. His protest has only just begun.

“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” -Martin Luther King Jr.—Kyle Alvey