On MSNBC, The Root Politics Editor Jason Johnson discusses the controversy surrounding 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the Star-Spangled Banner.
Professor of Political Science. Politics Editor for The Root. Latest Book: Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell
On MSNBC, The Root Politics Editor Jason Johnson discusses the controversy surrounding 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the Star-Spangled Banner.
Morgan State University professor Jason Johnson appeared on Bruce Silverman’s radio show to discuss Colin Kaepernick and the National Anthem.
Colin Kaepernick found himself in the news for refusing to sit during the National Anthem. Dr. Jason Johnson is a professor of political science and he gave us great perspective on the issue that has dominated the sports landscape.
Click here to listen to Jason Johnson on Silverman on Sports.
San Francisco 49ers backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick chose last Friday to remind America that black lives matter. It’s a laudable goal, and one for which he should be commended. The role of the black athlete in addressing pressing social issues has moved from the “risk it all” activism of the 1960s to the “Republicans buy sneakers, too” attitude of the ’90s to athletes ready to risk it all at the peak of their powers today. Which is why Kaepernick’s move is so bold and brave. His NFL career is hanging by a “second” string, and with his actions Friday, he’s risked more for the movement than any black athlete in recent years.
On Friday, after what would be an otherwise totally unremarkable preseason football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers, some intrepid cameraperson noticed that Kaepernick did not stand for the national anthem. When asked later by a reporter why he didn’t, Kaepernick, in an exclusive interview after the game, told NFL Media: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” Kaepernick went on to say that he didn’t care if he lost endorsements over his position; he wanted to make sure he stood up for what is right.
Above all else, Kaepernick is absolutely right and should be applauded. The national anthem is a racist song, the federal government hasn’t done enough to protect African Americans in the face of institutional racism, and Kaepernick knows that just because he is a wealthy athlete doesn’t mean he’s not endangered by police brutality and racial discrimination. Just ask tennis star James Blake or the Atlanta Hawks’ Thabo Sefolosha.
What really makes Kaepernick’s public activism stand out, however, is the fact that he is no longer one of the premier stars of the NFL. As recently as 2014, he was the face of the NFL, as big as Cam Newton or Aaron Rodgers. On the field, he was a Sportscenter highlight every time he threw the ball or ran. He made the Super Bowl in his first year as a starter with the 49ers and came within one pass of beating the Baltimore Ravens in the “Blackout Bowl.”
Off the field, he was an advertisers’ dream come true. In an era when African-American quarterbacks are becoming the norm, Kaepernick had the playmaking ability of Newton with the highly marketable, racially ambiguous looks of Russell Wilson. Fans called him Kaeptain America; hemade Kaepernicking the cool alternative to Tebowing; he hosted the Kids’ Choice Awards on Nickelodeon; and he had endorsement deals with MusclePharm, McDonald’s and Jaguar and his own Beats by Dre commercial.
Then it all fell apart. The 49ers started losing, he signed a sham contract that made him the laughingstock of NFL analysts, and by the 2015 season he was benched for perennial underachiever Blaine Gabbert. His best option this year is to be an overpaid backup or get traded. Now he’s taken a stand against racial injustice with a new coach who isn’t exactly known as the most racially tolerant guy out there. Colin Kaepernick has put modern sports activism in reverse.
The model for black-athlete activism since the 1990s used to follow one of two paths. One group stayed silent on issues affecting the black community, avoiding any stands on any issues during their most successful playing years for fear of losing endorsements (Michael Jordan). The other group eventually became very vocal and active once they were no longer playing and had nothing to lose (ahem, Jordan again). However, this new generation of athletes has become more pro-active on civil rights issues while at the peak of their careers, but only when protected by on-the-court success.
Consider LeBron James. James is arguably a top five basketball player of all time who encouraged the Miami Heat to wear hoodies in solidarity and remembrance of Trayvon Martin. Yet with all of his immense power and influence last fall, James didn’t want any part of the Tamir Rice situation in Cleveland. Why? Standing up for black lives and Trayvon was a lot easier when he had a championship ring with the Miami Heat than standing up for Tamir would have been before James won that first trophy for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Cam Newton was blackity-blackity black with a 15-1 record going into a Super Bowl against the corpse of Peyton Manning last February. Now, after a humbling loss and some meme-worthy playon his part, the “Blackest (Carolina) Panther” is suddenly claiming that racism isn’t a problem,and he’s filling out his “new black” application as fast as he can. WNBA players from the Minnesota Lynx got fined, then unfined, then chastised for speaking out against the killings of Philando Castile and Dallas police officers. I’m pretty sure the fact that the Minnesota Lynx are the reigningWNBA champions had something to do with their confidence in speaking out.
The point is, most African-American athletes who speak out today do it from behind a championship podium, and it’s much harder for racists and conservative pundits to throw shade at someone whose championship rings are shining so bright. But if they don’t have a playoff berth or championship ring, they are less likely to speak.
That’s what makes Kaepernick’s activism so brave. He’s got nothing to fall back on. He’s not a champion; he’s not the face of the NFL; heck, he’s not even a starter on his own team. When the racist trolls and the conservative pundits come for him, he will have nothing to protect himself with beyond his Christian tattoos, and he even gets called out for those.
Not everyone, let alone a professional athlete, is built for a life of civil activism, and there’s no shame in that. Nevertheless, whenever professional athletes choose to take part in the larger movement for justice, it’s worth noting, applauding and supporting. This is especially the case when an athlete is holding on to his or her career by a thread and will have little to stand on professionally when the backlash comes. Let’s hope that Kaepernick’s activism shows other athletes that you don’t have to wait until you’re a champion on the field to be a champion for justice.
This article originally appeared online at The Root.
Super Bowl Sunday can bring up a whole slew of emotions for people across the sports and nonsports spectrum. Decades of marketing have turned it into a de facto American holiday that everyone is supposed to care about. So even if you don’t care about football, you feel pressured to attend, like when you go to a New Year’s Eve party when you’d rather order Chinese takeout and stay home.
Fortunately, this year’s Super Bowl has plenty of cultural and political reasons for you nonsports fans to pay attention, giving you a reason to root for a team even if you don’t care about the game itself.
Here are the top, four nonsports reasons to root for a team in the Super Bowl:
1. Cam Newton, Making History
Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton can make a hater out of all of us. He’s a Heisman Trophy winner, the first African-American quarterback to win an NFL MVP (back in ’03, they forced Steve McNair to share the award with Peyton Manning) and is one of the most successful quarterbacks in the history of the Carolina Panthers franchise. With that history already in his lap, Newton will be the fourth consecutive African-American quarterback to play in a Super Bowl, something that has never happened in NFL history. (Thanks, President Obama!)
More politically, Newton should be a favorite of any left-leaning Super Bowl viewer. He’s come out infavor of gay marriage and has strongly stated that he would welcome any openly gay player to the Carolina Panthers. He invited the family of one of the Charleston, S.C., mass-shooting victims to be his special guests at the Carolina Panthers’ final game last season. The man even got some of his teammates together to help push someone’s car that broke down on the side of the road.
Lastly, Cam Newton has been the catalyst for more white tears in sports than Serena Williams, Gabby Douglas, LeBron James and Richard Sherman combined. Newton’s confidence, marketable good looks and penchant for turning the “dab” into a new national dance has the crusty old racists in the NFL longing for the good ol’ days when all the quarterbacks were white and occasionally had questionable pasts. If you’re looking for someone to root for during a Black History Month Super Bowl you can’t do much better than Cam Newton, who has shown you don’t have to smooth the edges off blackness to be a successful QB in the NFL.
2. Peyton Manning, Pitch God for the GOP
While there’s no comparison between the dance moves of Peyton Manning and Cam Newton’s, that doesn’t mean the Broncos’ quarterback isn’t worth rooting for. The NFL has had two golden boy quarterbacks over the last 20 years: the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady, and Manning, who has five NFL MVPs, has appeared in three Super Bowls (lost two of them) and is the world’s biggest pitchman, selling everything from DirecTV to Papa John’s to Ritz crackers.
Politically, Manning is the guy you want to root for if you’re a conservative. He has come out asaggressively ambivalent on gay players in the NFL, but has actively given to Republican candidates across the country who oppose LGBT rights. Manning is very selective about who he gives money to; he supported former Sens. Fred Thompson and Richard Lugar, who spent their entire careers trying to kill affirmative action, and Manning also came out in favor of Mitt Romney in 2012.
Manning is also a devout Christian and states that his faith drives every part of his life, including football, something that conservative football fans and nonfans alike can get behind. He’s also done a tremendous amount of work for his native New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina.
3. The Carolina Panthers and the Ownership of Evil
If you wanted to root against any team ownership in the Super Bowl this Sunday, Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson seems like an easy pick.
Richardson is listed as the third-most-powerful owner in the NFL and a member of the NFL’s contract-negotiating committee. While for years the Carolina Panthers were a pretty sorry team, posting losing records year after year, Richardson had no problem trying to bully the city of Charlotte, N.C., into paying for a new stadium to line his pockets.
Richardson was one of the main NFL owners behind the lockout in 2011 when he argued that owners had to “take back their league” from the players, even though by all accounts, the lockout was nothing but a greedy, money-grab by owners.
He also seems to have some bizarre, racialized feelings about which players on his team are allowed to get tattoos. And Richardson notoriously tried to defend and keep domestic-abuser Greg Hardy on his team until public sentiment got too big to ignore. But I guess if there’s one decent thing he’s done it’s he gave money to the families of the slain Charleston 9 in South Carolina, but that was probably Newton’s idea.
4. The Denver Broncos’ Right-Leaning Bowlens
The vast majority of owners in the NFL are conservative Republicans (the Seahawks, Steelers and Giants being some of the few outliers), so it’s no surprise that the Bowlen family that owns the Broncos leans right.
Team owner Pat Bowlen and his family spend their philanthropic efforts on conservative causes, and they have been less than supportive of the legalization of marijuana in the state of Colorado. Bowlen has been known to make the occasional off-color racial joke, but that’s almost par for the course when it comes to old NFL owners. His son, on the other hand, refers to himself as “the Blood of the City” of Denver and uses his father’s Alzheimer’s condition as a justification for domestic violence.
If that wasn’t enough to tip your rooting interest, remember, if you’re a conservative, the rest of the Broncos organization might be right for you. Former NFL quarterback and Broncos Executive Vice President of Operations John Elway stated in 2014 that he was a Republican because he “didn’t believe in safety nets,” and one of his car dealerships in California was sued for racial discrimination.
This article originally appeared at The Root.
Let’s talk about sex. Not the kind of sex you’re having, or want to have or think you should be having. Let’s talk about famous-people sex, which is the kind we’re always talking about and reading about anyway.
Earlier this week Russell Wilson, the Seattle Seahawks quarterback, was being interviewed in front of the congregation at the Rock Church (a mega-church in San Diego) and was asked about his relationship with singer and dancer Ciara. Wilson said that God “spoke to him” and encouraged him to “lead” Ciara by “taking all that extra stuff off the table.” He went on to say, “So I told her right then and there, what would you do if we … did it Jesus’ way?”
Ciara apparently enthusiastically agreed, and within 24 hours the sports and pop-culture media hot takes were coming at Wilson faster than a linebacker on steroids. Two public figures making a normal decision about sex shouldn’t really be news, but when your story hits the sweet spot between America’s racial stereotypes and sexual hang-ups, you’re bound to end up in the crosshairs of social punditry.
There’s plenty to unpack about why Wilson’s comments became news beyond the sports pages, but part of the reason, besides race and gender, is that his relationship with Ciara just doesn’t fit the “pop star plus athlete” model we’ve seen over the last few years. Keri Hilson is a second-tier pop singer-writer and she’s dating Serge Ibaka, who’s the third- (or fourth-) best player on the Oklahoma City Thunder; that makes sense. A few years ago when Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo was the hotness, he was dating Jessica Simpson, the pop singer who was always repping Texas. Those are the kinds of pairings that make TMZ Sports do an officewide fist bump. But Russell Wilson and Ciara? No P.R. team would have put those two together.
Wilson is the face of the NFL right now. With his racially ambiguous looks, he’s gone to back-to-back Super Bowls, winning one, and has a squeaky-clean image as an evangelical Christian who speaks to mega-churches all over the West Coast. He’s like the reverse Kanye: Wilson divorced his white wifeafter he won his first Super Bowl, and a couple of months later he’s doing the 1, 2 Step with Ciara.
Not to dump on the Queen of Crunk, but she’s a C-level celebrity (even with black folks) with questionable singing skills, mostly known for being a great dancer and choreographer. Plus, she just had a baby with former fiance rapper Future—and then named the baby Future. There are probably half a dozen other singers, actresses—heck, even schoolteachers and gospel singers—who are a better fit for Wilson’s “image” than Ciara, but for now, that’s who he’s with. Which is part of why the sex issue is so prominent.
Our expectation of athletes—especially men, and especially black male athletes—is that they’re out-of-control sex and party machines. The black male athlete in America is the “predator on a leash” of his league. The media message is that all these athletes are good for is entertaining us and banging hot chicks and producing kids out of wedlock every season. And while we may know that this is not true, black men who are athletes are seldom the spokesmen, intentionally or not, for sexual responsibility and faith.
More recently, athletes like Tim Tebow and Olympian Lolo Jones have talked about their virginity, and they’ve had whole segments on ESPN’s First Take about what great role models they are. Heck, TV One is about to launch a show called Born Again Virgin. But Russell Wilson? When he says that he and his girlfriend are going to stop having sex, he’s accused of being gay, pundits call him an out-of-touch moralizer, and abstinence itself is cast as some sort of sexist control mechanism for women.
The reality is that plenty of nonfamous couples choose to forgo sex at certain times in nonmarital relationships for various reasons. Wilson and Ciara’s decision may be based specifically on their shared Christian faith, but that should be something worthy of praise, not shade and speculation. He wasn’t lecturing the public or even the congregation, and if you watch the full interview video, it’s obvious that the Rock Church pastor was pushing the sexual-purity issue more than Wilson, who almost looked uncomfortable with the line of questioning.
We live in a culture that consistently tells men and women that women owe men (especially powerful ones) sex. That having sex with beautiful women is the clear marker of manhood, and that all decisions about sex are driven by men’s desires and women’s acquiescence. Isn’t the Bill Cosby case essentially about a man who wanted sex so badly that he worked to deny women their choice in the matter?
So the idea of a man—a famous black man and athlete—saying that he and his partner came to a mutual decision about sex based on faith, and that decision may include refraining from sex, is something worthy of tremendous praise and admiration, whether or not it’s your belief system. Let’s resist the temptation to flood the Internet with memes about “her goodies” and perpetual sports analogies about Wilson getting picked off before he gets inside the end zone. For once, let’s let some famous black people try to be role models about sex. Tebow and Spears shouldn’t be allowed to corner the market on moral celebrityhood.
This article originally appeared at TheRoot.com.
Dr. Jason Johnson is a professor, political analyst and public speaker. Fresh, unflappable, objective, he is known for his ability to break down stories with wit and candor. Johnson is the author the book Political Consultants and Campaigns: One Day to Sell, a tenured professor in the School of Global Journalism & Communication at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland and Politics Editor at TheRoot.com. Dr. Johnson has an extensive public speaking and media background ranging from … [Read More...] about About Jason Johnson