According to some media accounts, Sunday’s Super Bowl LVII was the Blackest Super Bowl ever. With the focus on Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts as the two black starting quarterbacks, Sheryl Lee Ralph’s singing of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”(“The Negro National Anthem”), and Rihanna’s half-time show, there was a new injection of color into an American sports institution, even though roughly 75% of the players in the NFL are men of color. It was sufficiently Black to cause many on the right to complain about its “wokeness” — a word meaning “too many Black folks.”
But the 500-pound gorilla in the corner is the legacy of Colin Kaepernick. Like all the Civil Rights activists who stand on the shoulders of Rosa Parks, whose 1955 refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery Alabama bus sparked a movement that changed America, every minority performer on the Super Bowl stage, along with the starting quarterbacks, coaches and assistant coaches and NFL officials of color, should recognize that they stand on Kaepernick’s shoulders or perhaps more appropriately, on the knee that he took back in 2016.
But somewhere between the planning for the big event and the invitations to the featured artist and guests and attempts by the NFL to add diversity to the programing, Kaepernick was forgotten. During the weeks that led up to the game, and the weekend-long celebration, not one person recognized that Kaepernick was conspicuous in his absence from not just the spotlight but any light at all.
Back in 2020 Michael Rosenberg of Sports Illustrated wrote, “Mainstream white America is going to reconsider Kaepernick at some point the way it reconsidered Muhammad Ali years after he refused to go to Vietnam. Progress comes in fits and starts, and this country tends to punish those who urge it to move faster.” Rosenberg concludes by saying that he “believes the reconsideration of Kaepernick has begun.” But I’m not so sure.
Filmmaker Spike Lee, who is producing a documentary about Kaepernick and his career in the NFL, feels that not much has changed since 2016 when Kaepernick made his decision to take a knee during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice. As Lee points out, Kaepernick still does not have a job with the NLF. At the end of the 2016 season, he was released by the San Francisco 49ers and has not played in a professional football game since. Now at age 36, his playing days are pretty much in his rearview mirror.
Since 2016 untold Americans, many of them persons of color, have been victims of police brutality and injustice. Mistreatment of Asian Americans is on the rise. As I write this article, the news media is covering yet another mass shooting, this time at Michigan State University. This year to date America has experienced more than 67 mass shootings, as the nation still reels from the murder of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the Memphis, Tennessee, police officers.
Violence in America and racial injustice will not be cured by the singing of the Negro National Anthem at the Super Bowl. It helps in terms of the majority population recognizing that minorities have a culture that they would like to be learned and understood. But we as a nation must deal with systemic racism and Trumpism and its legacy.
If the NFL wants to make amends for the years of discrimination against Black players, which was in effect from 1934-1946, the denial until recently of giving Black players the opportunity to play quarterback or to serve as a head coach, it needs to take Colin Kaepernick off the back of the bus. His recognition at next year’s Super Bowl would mean a lot and show a lot more than Rihanna’s baby bump.
C. Ellen Connally is a retired judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court. From 2010 to 2014 she served as the President of the Cuyahoga County Council. An avid reader and student of American history, she serves on the Board of the Ohio History Connection, is currently vice president of the Cuyahoga County Soldiers and Sailors Monument Commission and president of the Cleveland Civil War Round Table. She holds degrees from BGSU, CSU and is all but dissertation for a PhD from the University of Akron.
3 Responses to “Kaepernick Still at the Back of the Bus By C. Ellen Connally”
Mel Maurer
Until Kaepernick is recognized, many other efforst will just be seen as tokenism. We’ve had enough of that.
Joanne Rassie
Colin K. Never showed disrespect …he did not turn his back to the flag or to America
Rosemarie Wetzel
Thank you for your article I’m not a football fan but I do wonder what if he had been allowed to stay and play how his career would have gone. That last sentence was on point.