Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest of the national anthem has caught and kept the attention of the country, opening up a near-unprecedented scale of dialogue about the political responsibilites of athletes and the myriad ways in which a person can protest. Unfortunately, it has more people talking about those two topics than the one it was designed to call attention to — the systemic oppression of African-Americans, most publicly by the police — but as a means of starting a conversation, it has succeeded on a grand scale.
The backlash against Kaep’s protest has been as widespread as it has been belligerent and racially tinged. Most of the hollering has been done over interviews, on the radio and on social media. But one restaurant in Virginia has taken it to another level by taping Kaepernick’s jersey to their floor to be walked over by customers.
Of course, as all of the backlash to Kaepernick has been draped in misdirection, so has the restaurant denied there was a racial component to its action. WTKR spoke to the general manager of the establishment, reporting, “He told us taping the jersey down was about sportsmanship and Kaepernick’s disrespect of the flag – not race.”
(Via WTKR)
