Abstract
NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling for the national anthem before games in the fall of 2016 was meant to call attention to racial injustice in the United States. He has become a lightning rod for criticism as well as a hero for speaking truth to power. I argue in this essay that Kaepernick is best understood as that which draws on what Cornel West calls “black prophetic fire.” This distinguishes Kaepernick’s activism from the kind that criticizes white supremacy without linking it to institutional structures that support it. The hyper-militaristic/capitalistic context that the NFL has fostered helps make Kaepernick’s protest appropriately prophetic.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Though he is not the only football player in history to take a political stand, Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns should come to mind as one example.
- 2.
As of December 2017, Kaepernick has given away $900,000 of the 1 million dollars that he pledged. He has given money to anti-police brutality nonprofits, community reform and minority empowerment movements, youth initiatives, health reform advocates and organizations that promote climate change awareness.
References
Bercovitch, S. (1978). The American jeremiad. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Brooks, D. (2016, September 16). The uses of patriotism. The New York Times.
Browne, R. (2017, September 12). Colin Kaepernick has a job, Bleacher Report. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2732670-colin-kaepernick-anthem-race-in-america. Accessed December 5, 2017.
Capehart, J. (2017, September 24). Taking a knee with Colin Kaepernick and standing with Stephen Curry against Trump. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/09/24/taking-a-knee-with-colin-kaepernick-and-standing-with-stephen-curry-against-trump/?utm_term=.d70b241b2a8a. Accessed December 5, 2017.
Coates, T.-N. (2015). Between the world and me. New York: Spiegel and Grau.
Congelio, B. (2017, December 27). They should stop their crying. They hate their country…. Slate. https://slate.com/culture/2017/12/racist-letters-about-john-carlos-and-tommie-smith-sound-like-they-were-written-about-colin-kaepernick.html. Accessed January 10, 2018.
Flaherty, B. (2017, September 24). From Kaepernick sitting to Trump’s fiery comments: NFL’s anthem protests have spurred discussion. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/sports/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protests-and-NFL-activism-in-quotes/?utm_term=.c4ffd5cf2499. Accessed December 5, 2017.
Hedges, C. (2013, September 9). Cornel West and the fight to save the black prophetic tradition, Truthout. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/18691-cornel-west-and-the-fight-to-save-the-black-prophetic-tradition. Accessed January 3, 2018.
Howard-Pitney, D. (1990). The Afro-American jeremiad: Appeals for justice in America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Murphy, A. R. (2009) Prodigal nation: Moral decline and divine punishment. New York: Oxford University Press, 7p.
Reese, H. (2017, December 25). Cornel West: Neoliberalism has failed us. JSTOR Daily. https://daily.jstor.org/cornel-west-interiew/. Accessed December 28, 2017.
West, C. (1988). Prophetic fragments: Illuminations of the crisis in American religion and culture. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing.
West, C. (1999). The Cornel West reader. New York: Basic Civitas Books.
West, C. (2017, December 17). Ta-Nehisi Coates is the neoliberal face of the black freedom struggle, The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/17/ta-nehisi-coates-neoliberal-black-struggle-cornel-west. Accessed December 19, 2017.
West, C., & Buschendorf, C. (2014). Black prophetic fire. Boston: Beacon Press.
Zirin, D. (2018, January 2). The NFL chose to tank its season rather than sign Colin Kaepernick. The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/the-nfl-chose-to-tank-its-season-rather-than-sign-colin-kaepernick/. Accessed January 5, 2018.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Scholes, J. (2019). The Black Prophetic Fire of Colin Kaepernick. In: Shoemaker, T. (eds) The Prophetic Dimension of Sport. SpringerBriefs in Religious Studies(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02293-8_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02293-8_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02292-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02293-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)