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It’s funny when you think certain aspects of your life are concrete, set in stone and unmovable, and we tell ourselves a story that that’s the way things are.

There are countless things that you take for granted which aren’t actually true or come with caveats or small print that you didn’t realise when you tried to make a noise or make a change.

I’m sure most of the people who read this blog know the story of Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback who decided to ‘take a knee’ during the National Anthem.

I’ve been a long-term fan of American sports since I was a boy. I followed this with significant interest until it got all the way to the top and involved some crazy proclamations from Donald Trump.

This isn’t a blog about whether Kaepernick is right or not (I think he is but that doesn’t matter) I think you’d be hard pushed to suggest that Black Americans aren’t disadvantaged when you look at the statistics of what goes on. I think you’d be hard pushed to suggest that there aren’t some sections of society that want to make a difference with that.

This is a blog about the country of pioneers, the concept of free speech and everybody being equal and having the same opportunities.

All that Kaepernick did was go down on one knee when the National Anthem was played because he felt that some of the words were not true anymore.

He’s allowed to do that right?

Kaepernickhimself wasn’t a problem because if he was the only one that did that he would have looked a bit daft and he wouldn’t have been disruptive, not to any great degree anyway. The problem was that he galvanised other people’s thoughts who also thought the same thing. This is often the case when you decide to stand up for something you think is wrong – there is a sub culture of people who also think it’s wrong but are too scared to stand up until you did. There is a lesson to be learned in that for all of us.

So, other people took the knee in National Anthems in American football games on live TV all over the country and the ‘mainly’ fat white guys at the top of American football got scared all the way to the fat white guy in the Whitehouse,

Colin Kaepernick has started a discussion, a much wider discussion, in the United States about why he might have done that but also why other people might have done the same thing and what the problems are. That is beyond brave whether you agree with him or not.

Kaepernick had it all, he was the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers and for anybody who can remember 1980’s American football, that’s the job that Joe Montana had when they won the Super Bowl!

Kaepernick knew that he might get in trouble for what he did and trouble meant that he was cast aside by the San Francisco 49ers and made a free agent. No-one else in American football has picked him up.

He has been a free agent now for almost two years.

The circumstance in itself speaks volumes in this whole story because Kaepernick was good enough to be drafted into a position where he was a quarterback for one of the most famous American football teams in the world and now he’s not good enough?

Of course, it’s got nothing to do with his athletic ability or his ability to play the game as a fantastic quarterback. It’s all about the views of the people who watch American football on TV and the adverts and what they may or may not buy when there’s someone there in front of them sending them a message that they don’t like.

This is a metaphor of course for other aspects of our society where we’re too scared to speak up lest we lose the material benefits of always walking between the lines and not causing a fuss.

It was Evelyn Beatrice Hall who wrote “I disapprove of what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it” which underpinned many of the early philosophies of the first Presidents of the United States.

Free speech – only if you say the right things.

Blog Post Number: 1733