Colin Kaepernick, Nobel Peace Prize nominee?
Many people have been talking about it, as Kaepernick has become the face of the new civil rights movement, including Lucifer’s D.B. Woodside.
When asked by a fan recently if he thought Kaepernick should be considered for the prestigious honor, D.B. answered “yes.”
— DB Woodside (@dbwofficial) June 18, 2020
Woodside is not alone, as over 2,000 people have signed a petition backing the award idea.
“He’s a modern-day Rosa Parks and Muhammad Ali all in one,” said Stephen A. Green, president of The People’s Consortium, a civil rights group. “When you think about what he has put on the line for himself personally, with what he could lose and what he has already gone through, that’s not hyperbole. He has risked a lot to elevate the issues that affect black and brown bodies in America.”
Recent events have proven how right Kaepernick was to bring attention to race and police brutality.
When Devin McCourty saw life leaving George Floyd, on video, last month, he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.
“I’m like, there’s no way this cop is going to keep his knee on this guy’s neck,” says McCourty, a safety for the New England Patriots, told TIME. “There’s no way that’s happening.”
Floyd’s death left McCourty, an active member of the Players’ Coalition — a group founded by NFL players that seeks to “end social justices and racial inequality” — heartbroken.
And photos on social media showing Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who’s been charged with third degree murder and manslaughter in connection with Floyd’s death, kneeling on Floyd’s neck, next to a shot of Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem before an NFL game, moved him.
“If you look at that picture and you listen to his interview from a couple of years ago, he talked about how [kneeling] had nothing to do with the military,” says McCourty, in reference to Kaepnick’s protest during the anthem. “This is for people who are on the streets, who are being abused. For cops who are abusing their authority. If you listen to that, then you look a the picture, it almost brings you to tears. Because you’re like, he’s right. He wasn’t right now. He was right when he said it. He would have been right years ago.”
Kaepernick’s anthem protest and efforts on behalf of the underprivileged triggered a wave of social activism in sports unlike anything seen since the 1960s.
Activists admire Kaepernick for never cowering to public pressure.
It’s led Woodside and other celebrities calling for the former NFL quarterback to be recognized.
The View’s Whoopi Goldberg asked Sunny Hostin during a recent episode if Kaepernick was owed an apology.
“I think he’s not only owed an apology, Whoopi. I think he’s owed his job. I think he’s owed back pay. And I think he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize,” Hostin said, invoking a peace award given to civil rights era icon Martin Luther King Jr., former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Catholic saint Mother Theresa, and Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel.
Kaepernick started the practice of kneeling during the anthem to call attention to the issues of racial inequality and police brutality.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said in August 2016, when the press first noticed his refusal to stand for the national anthem. “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.”
After Kaepernick started his campaign, President Trump and conservatives shifted focus to the patriotic aspect of kneeling rather than the meaning behind it.
Trump called Kaepernick a “son of a bitch” for “disrespecting” the flag.
Kaepernick’s controversial decision cost him a job in the NFL, a huge sacrifice for a professional athlete to make.
“Clearly, Colin Kaepernick paid the ultimate price, in terms of his career,” said Charles K. Ross, professor of African American studies at the University of Mississippi and author of the book “Outside the Lines: African-Americans and Integration in the National Football League.”
Since he stopped playing football, more incidents of police brutality against African Americans has come to light.
During the George Floyd protests last month, about 20 NFL players released a video reciting names of victims, demanding that the NFL condemn racism and admit its policy against peaceful protests were wrong and to affirm that black lives matter.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell did so in a video message the following day, admitting the league had been wrong.
“We the National Football League admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest,” Goodell said.
That wasn’t enough for Hostin.
“I think it’s shameful that people we’re allowed to co-opt that movement and make it about the flag and make it something that it was never about. It really just is shameful. I’m sort of shocked that Roger Goodell never mentioned his name,” Hostin said, insisting protests were “never about the flag.”
Dr. Harry Edwards, America’s preeminent sports sociologist, has written a letter backing Kaepernick’s candidacy to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
This year’s 318 candidates are already set.
“He should be nominated at least for the Nobel Peace Prize, not just in terms of what he has done, but going all the way back to the beginning when athletes have played such a major role in the social justice movement, the movement for freedom, equality and so forth, not just in this country but around the world,” Edwards said earlier this month. “An athlete has never been named for the Noble Peace Prize. Never,” Edwards added. “But I think there’s a representative core of athletes, many of whom sacrificed their careers.”
In 2018, Kaepernick won Amnesty International’s highest honor, the Ambassador of Conscience Award.
“Given with where we are and what we’re dealing with, and the correlation between Kaepernick taking a knee (during 2016 national anthems at 49ers games) and a police officer taking a knee on a Black man and murdering him, lynching him right there on television, it’s time for an athlete to be recognized,” Edwards said.
Once sports do make their return from the Covid-19 stoppages, we might now see a second wave of athlete activism, during the national anthem and otherwise, that reminds people that the players themselves can suffer a fate similar to Floyd’s.
“It can happen to us, really,” says Carolina Panthers left tackle Russell Okung, who has raised his fist during the anthem. “There’s going to be more killings until accountability happens. And athletes are going to be moved into action.”