Nike took him in, but ditched Manny Pacquiao for speaking up against gay marriage. A case of which advocacy is more bankable.
Well, one is standing up against oppression and one is supporting oppression. This is a bit like if youtube banned The Golden One but left Contrapoints up, you could say “a case of which politics Youtube likes”… But The Golden One is a neonazi who posts videos about the Jewish Question, and Contrapoints is a moderate leftist. These are not the same thing.
I wouldn’t call speaking up against SSM as supporting oppression. Right to SSM is simply a legal recognition. You always had the right to co-habitate with any adult person of your choosing.
As to the kneeling bit, it simply doesn’t move me. I find it unmanly because you are using disrespect as a weapon. It’s a peaceful protest, I’ll give it that.
Cohabitation and marriage do not have the same legal benefits. You must know that.
“Unmanly.” We’ll, there’s the problem right there.
(As a veteran, I did not know that I was being disrespected until the Right told me. I took Kap at his word that he was protesting police violence.)
That depends on what the assessed risk is. If you drive to the store for someone/something and die in a car crash on the way, you don’t get celebrated for giving your life for that, even though you accepted deliberately ran the risk. (If you, for example, signed up to go fight in a war, that would be a obvious risk that you get more credit for.)
But he also made himself into a hero among the large population of people who automatically cheer any protest of this type.
And Pat Tillman made himself into a hero among the large population of people who automatically assume that signing up to fight in wars is heroic. Just because your sacrifice in one area gains you admiration and hero-worship in another area doesn’t mean that you didn’t make a sacrifice.
That’s not the point I’m making. You are making a qualitative judgment about what agendas are OK to promote on the field and which ones are not.
Did you miss the part where he said:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color”
He is clearly NOT honoring anything, he is protesting. He literally says he is not showing pride in the flag. He is literally saying that it is because of things he doesn’t like about the country. I think veterans/military only gets involved because its always the military or someone associated with the military that brings out the flag during the games.
He can protest but studies show that police do not actually kill black men at higher rates than white men after you adjust for reasonable variables.
Right now Banquet bear is quibbling over the difference between those words that Kaepernick ACTUALLY said and the paraphrase that someone used:
“he is unwilling to express pride in a country that he views so negatively”
So what do you feel is the difference between those two statements that makes the paraphrasing incorrect or misleading?
The hell? Are you saying I should be OK with players demonstrating in favor of racism too or else I’m a hypocrite? 
Wrong. The rate is 2.7 times greater.
You missed a few words when you bolded:
** “pride in a country”
“pride in a flag for a country” **
Seems like you are quibbling
No but you are defending the statement of someone who did.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21191499&postcount=105
You curse a lot.
I think I agree that Kaepernick does not surrender all legal remedies as a condition of protesting. Lets say I engage in civil disobedience and make my own salt at the ocean and I therefore get arrested for doing so in a very public manner. Do I have to plead guilty or can I make a case for myself in court that there is something wrong with the law or even how the arrest was made? Do I HAVE to go to jail for the protest to represent a sacrifice?
To be fair, I don’t think he “sacrificed everything”
Even Muhamed Ali didn’t “sacrifice everything” but he sacrificed a hell of a lot more than Kaepernick.
No, I’m saying that you can’t tell the NFL what sort of protest they must tolerate and what sort of protest thy don’t have to tolerate. They generally don’t let you advance a personal agenda like that. Do they?
The poverty rate among blacks is approximately 3 times greater than whites.
Studies show there cops do not shoot blacks at higher rates than whites after to take reasonable variables into account. I’m pretty sure you are familiar with the study in question and yet you choose to keep ignoring it.
The same study says that cops harass blacks at higher rates and engage in police brutality at higher rates against blacks after taking these variables into account but not so much with shooting.
I agree with that.
But that’s only to the extent that you’re talking about two different aspects. But if, for example, a guy “sacrifices” income of $1M in order to increase his income by $2M, then that’s not a sacrifice.
To the extent that your argument is that “Kaepernick voluntarily sacrificed his good name and reputation”, then the issue is whether the prognosis was that his good name and reputation would be sacrificed, net-net.
Tillman knowingly sacrificed his NFL career. That’s not offset by anything.
Okay, if and when you provide proof that he arranged his endorsement with Nike before throwing away his NFL career, you have a point. Until that time… he sacrificed his prospects in the NFL for his protest, and it just so happened that he benefited from his sacrifice after the fact.
Benefiting after the fact doesn’t negate the meaning behind the initial sacrifice unless that was the plan in the first place. So, how was that “the plan?”
He had a fading career. Some people think it was a cynical ploy to get a few more years out of a career that was probably in its last year or three. I personally think that he actually believes in what he is doing, but the bigger point is that he didn’t even come close to “sacrificing everything”
I don’t think anyone is lionizing Kaepernick as the next MLK Jr. or anything like that. We can celebrate a moral stance and at least a non-zero sacrifice while recognizing that he’s just a person who made a relatively minor (in the scheme of things) decision to kneel rather than stand. But that doesn’t mean that his protest shouldn’t or can’t be used as a symbolic rallying point for others – even while we recognize that Kap may just be a mostly average (if particularly physically talented compared to the average American), decent person who just made a small decision that turned out to resonate in a big way.
Which, in history, happens all the time. The tank blocking guy in China may or may not have been an outstanding moral individual – he might have just been an angry guy who had a bad day and decided he’d had enough. Rosa Parks was an activist who just decided she wasn’t going to give up her seat any more. Emmitt Till’s mother just decided that she wanted the country to see the physical effects of racism on children, and thus held an open-casket funeral. And many more, most of whom were not moral superheroes, but rather decent people making a single seemingly small decision that resonated in a big way. We can recognize the big impacts these folks’ decisions have had without pretending that they are amazingly special people of superhuman personal character. And Kap may turn out to be another in that line of small decision-makers that become far more influential than they might have expected.
The context here was the comparison to Tillman, in relation to the Nike slogan. Tillman was a genuinely unique individual in this regard.
Which is not to fault Kaepernick for not being like Tillman. Almost no one is like Tillman which is the whole point. (I can tell you with absolute certainty that I personally would not give up an NFL career to go fight in Afghanistan.)
But if the question is who better encapsulates that slogan, there’s no contest, really.
In the very specific case of “NFL player serving and dying in Afghanistan,” you’re absolutely correct. But in the broader case of “sports stars who risked their careers and lives by choosing military service,” not *quite *unique.
Ted Williams left pro ball twice, the second time flying for the Marines in Korea. Yogi interrupted his baseball career to serve and was part of the invasion of Normandy; Jack Dempsey was a similar situation, only with boxing and the invasion of Okinawa.
(Of course, that’s not considering the players who developed their skills in military academies and then fulfilled their obligations before going pro. David Robinson had some pretty cushy duty, but Staubach was in Da Nang. Non-combat, but still.)
This here is why I loves me some SDMB. I get to fight my ignorance and avoid work at the same time!