Colin Kaepernick Is Silenced by a Settlement, but His Knee Spoke Volumes

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/sports/colin-kaepernick-nfl-human-rights.html

Colin Kaepernick Is Silenced by a Settlement, but His Knee Spoke Volumes
By Michael Powell
Feb. 15, 2019


Colin Kaepernick acknowledging cheers after his 49ers beat the Rams at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 2016, the season he started kneeling during the pregame national anthem — and his last in the N.F.L. Usa Today Sports/USA Today Sports, via Reuters

So a compelling two-year run of American political and cultural theater comes to a deeply unsatisfying conclusion. Colin Kaepernick, a once brilliant young quarterback, chose to take a knee for his beliefs and endured apparent blackballing by the most powerful sports league in North America.

It would be churlish to criticize this man for taking an unspecified financial settlement and signing a nondisclosure agreement with the National Football League after he had accused the league’s teams of colluding to keep him out. He sacrificed for his beliefs and with a dignified use of free speech, that grandest of American traditions, he came to personify a coming of political age across several sports.

He persevered despite sprays of vitriol from this nation’s president, Donald J. Trump, who in 2017 used the specter of this black man to stir resentments.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of those N.F.L. owners, when someone disrespects our flag, to say: ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’ ” Trump told a crowd in Alabama.