Six years ago, a Black football player decided he wasn't going to stand during the national anthem because America wasn't protecting the people he cared about. He lost his job when the country lost it. Six years later, a white baseball manager decided he wouldn't stand during the anthem because America isn't protecting the people he cares about. The country didn't take issue with his decision, and he's still employed.
This is bullsh*t.
Last week, San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler announced that he was staying in the locker room until he felt better about the direction of our country because of the school shooting massacre in Uvalde, Texas.
Kapler wrote on his website that he would be standing for the anthem.
Those who serve in our military and those who have paid the ultimate price for our rights and freedoms deserve that acknowledgment and respect, and I am honored to stand on the line today to show mine.
This is where the bullsh*t comes into play, and it is a three-part story.
Memorial Day isn't the only way to honor the men and women who have died. It was an ex-Green Beret that inspired Kaepernick to kneel. There is more than one way to protest. It doesn't have to be accepted by the white gaze to be considered appropriate.
Kapler is the manager of the baseball team in the same city where Kapler played football for the 49ers. Tony La Russa thinks Kapler's protest isn't appropriate because he's angered by decorum being interfered with. Most of the white America that Steve Kerr supports is supporting Kapler.
Kapler made his decisions after Uvalde.
White America's ability to pick and choose what protests or charitable causes they deem suitable is frustrating. Kapler is not a bad guy with bad intentions. It's impossible to argue that his stance isn't flimsy because he's been so moved by tragedies in America.
Kapler has been involved with baseball since 1998. He's played, coached, worked in a front office, and been on TV through Sandy Hook, Ferguson, Dylann Roof, and George Floyd. He feels a certain way about the direction of our country after all of that.
It's convenient to live with the privilege of it finally taking until 2022 to be concerned with how things are going in America. If you hadn't realized, gun violence or the threat of it was involved in all of the examples I listed. If this was about gun control for Kapler, what was it about Uvalde that struck him in such a way? The country has been fine with children being massacred at school for over a decade now.
Major League Baseball woke up in the summer of 2020 in the wake of George Floyd, and Kapler was a part of it. Kapler publicly supported and kneeled with players on his team that wanted to take a knee, even though his entire roster only featured one African-American, Jaylin Davis.
Kapler, Major League Baseball, and the rest of the sports world stopped kneeling a few weeks later. Black people getting killed by police was a fleeting emotion to them. Kapler is back at it two years later without any fear of being blackballed. We don't have to wonder if he'll ever manage again, as he's not dealing with anything like the blowback that Kaepernick still faces.
The definition of bullsh*t is this.
If we are not careful, future generations could wrongly think that Gabe Kapler was a freedom fighter because he stayed in the club during a song. It isn't like something like this hasn't happened before. If we're going to base this off facts, we should ask Claudette Colvin who the real face of the Montgomery Bus Boycott was. At the time, it was understood that America would find it easier to accept an older woman being tired and refusing to give up her seat as a call to action rather than a young pregnant girl. The boxes were checked by the parks. Colvin did not.
Sound familiar?
I thought so.
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