Latest / The Right Time with Bomani Jones / Why Kaepernicks protest failed to spark a movement | Bomani Jones & Jason England

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Why Kaepernicks protest failed to spark a movement | Bomani Jones & Jason England · The Right Time with Bomani Jones

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Wave.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the right time. A wave original.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: My name is Beaumont Jones. Thanks for listening wherever you
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: get your podcasts. Thanks for watching us on YouTube. Subscribe, like,
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  Speaker 2: rate us, review us, give us five stars. You only
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe you are
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: a hater. We are wrapping up our four-part series on
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: 10 years since the Colin Kaepernick protests. Check out our
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: episode one with Charles McDonald, episode two with Jason Goff,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: episode three with Howard Bryant. And now we are wrapping
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: up our fourth episode with our guest who is testing
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: our theories on sunglasses indoors. Also, he's got a lot
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: of things coming up soon. Look out for the name,
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Jason England. What's going on, man?
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  Speaker 1: Hey, pleased to join you. Jason England, I'm outspoken. My
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: language is broken into a slang, but it's just the
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  Speaker 1: dialect that I select when I hang.
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  Speaker 2: Man, I wanted to talk to you about this part
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: of the Kaepernick discussion, which is it's interesting because I
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: think that this part is in a lot of ways
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  Speaker 2: partially about the absence of Kaepernick, but also about the
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: impact of the protest. And the question that I've always
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: had is that was it a movement or was it
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  Speaker 2: a moment? And I think that applies generally to what
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: happened with Kaepernick. It also applies to when we get
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: to the year 2020. But I wanted to talk to
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  Speaker 2: you about. about after 2017, right, when it became clear
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: that they were not going to let him back. And
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: he did his workout, I think it was in 2018,
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: and that all went to hell. And it was clear,
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  Speaker 2: him as an NFL player was over, but if there
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  Speaker 2: was going to be a persistence for him, it was
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  Speaker 2: going to.
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  Speaker 3: Be either as a leader or as a martyr.
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  Speaker 2: And I think you would have to say martyr because
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  Speaker 2: he made a decision that I would not have recommended.
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  Speaker 2: And I'm curious what you think of this, which is
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  Speaker 2: I'm just going to stop speaking in public. Like I
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  Speaker 2: had a story I was working on 2017, maybe 2018.
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  Speaker 2: I'm not sure. And I asked him to, um, help
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  Speaker 2: me out with some fact check on some things that
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: I had there. I mean, make sure that, you know,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: things he had right. And, um, He said he didn't
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  Speaker 2: want to talk about it.
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  Speaker 3: I said, OK, I.
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Went ahead and I wrote it. And then he hit
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: me after to tell me how good it was. And
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  Speaker 2: I'm like, huh, that's.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: An interesting way to go about this.
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  Speaker 2: So it's not even simply in a lot of these
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  Speaker 2: cases about not being a public face.
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  Speaker 3: In some cases, it was just flatly. I'm not talking.
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  Speaker 2: He was obviously talking to some people, but it could
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: be difficult at times even to get a fact check.
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  Speaker 1: You talked about the difference between a moment and a movement,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the difference between real activism and spectacle. And I will
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: say that when he first started, I found him inspiring.
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  Speaker 1: That was real sacrifice, right? What he did was absolutely radical.
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  Speaker 1: Anything radical is disquieting. It's unsettling. And he made people
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: feel very unsettled. And so I think one thing I
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: want to recognize and give grace to him about is
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: that there was no playbook for what he was doing.
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  Speaker 1: And certainly we don't have a centralized leadership. And part
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: of that is due to an increasingly hyper-capitalistic society. And
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: another part of that, you know, is due to the
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  Speaker 1: fact that historically we live in a society that has
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  Speaker 1: murdered our outspoken radicals, you know, and, you know, The
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: outspoken radicals had a sense they were going to be killed,
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  Speaker 1: but they hadn't seen it, right? We've all seen it.
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  Speaker 1: So it's like, hey, if you want to do something radical,
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  Speaker 1: you might need a bullet. I feel like it's a
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  Speaker 1: sense that people have. And so you don't have that
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  Speaker 1: sort of radical action anymore. And you don't have a
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  Speaker 1: leadership that can take Kaepernick's hand and stand behind him
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  Speaker 1: and say, here's how we do it and here's what
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  Speaker 1: we're going to do to support you. So I felt
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  Speaker 1: great sympathy for him once this moved past the initial
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  Speaker 1: stages of his kneeling and he was a figure rather
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  Speaker 1: than a football player. But looking back on it, yikes.
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  Speaker 1: Where'd you go? There was real energy behind you. There
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  Speaker 1: were people waiting for you, you know, to speak and
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  Speaker 1: maybe not lead, but to say something. And there's something
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  Speaker 1: about this era. I think we've talked personally and privately
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  Speaker 1: about the need to do a postmortem, a sort of
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  Speaker 1: autopsy of what happened post Kaepernick, post George Floyd's murder
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  Speaker 1: and the energy behind it. How did we fumble that
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  Speaker 1: so badly? And it's something that I think about with Kaepernick.
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  Speaker 1: Where did he go wrong and where did the rest
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  Speaker 1: of us fail him as well?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I think something that is interesting about him and
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: in terms of like what place in leadership he should
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  Speaker 2: have taken or whatever, the place that I'm always willing
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  Speaker 2: to give him grace is we didn't ask Rosa Parks
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  Speaker 2: to also be Martin Luther King, right? Like, I felt
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  Speaker 2: like there was a large push from a lot of
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  Speaker 2: people to ask him to do things that many of
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  Speaker 2: us could have.
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  Speaker 3: Done ourselves, right? Like, grown-ass people being like, well, Colin,
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  Speaker 3: where we going now, Colin? Colin, what you think we
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  Speaker 3: should do?
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  Speaker 2: Colin, and Colin didn't, Colin clearly didn't have a strategy
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  Speaker 2: with this. He just sat next to the water cooler
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  Speaker 2: one day, right? And then we kept coming back like, hey, man,
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  Speaker 2: what else do you have for us? Like, it's like
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  Speaker 2: Neo from the Matrix, right? Like, there's this unlikely messianic
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  Speaker 2: sort of figure. And so, In a lot of ways,
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  Speaker 2: to me, the expectation that he then have the plan
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  Speaker 2: was a touch unfair, but it also consistently felt like
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  Speaker 2: he wanted to be seen as the face of that movement.
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  Speaker 2: And it felt like you can't really have both at
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  Speaker 2: the same time. But something I felt like happened to
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  Speaker 2: him after 2016 that I don't think we talked nearly
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  Speaker 2: enough about is that he was repeatedly vindicated, right? Like
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  Speaker 2: in ways that even those toward the median of the
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  Speaker 2: spectrum of opinions had to acknowledge. He was vindicated in
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  Speaker 2: 2017 when Donald Trump said to fire all the sons
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  Speaker 2: of bitches, right? Suddenly everybody was like, hey, this Colin guy,
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  Speaker 2: you know, maybe he's onto something here. I would argue
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  Speaker 2: that George Floyd is the big one, but even something
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  Speaker 2: like Laquan McDonald or any of these other cases that
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  Speaker 2: were along the way that came up, ultimately wound up
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  Speaker 2: being a validation, but it was really George Floyd, which
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  Speaker 2: to me, and I don't know if you or I
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  Speaker 2: have talked about this, the moment of George Floyd really
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  Speaker 2: begins with Trayvon Martin in 2012.
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  Speaker 3: And it goes along the way.
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  Speaker 2: And so it's not like Kaepernick popped up out of
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  Speaker 2: nowhere and said, hey, the police are killing us. This
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  Speaker 2: is part of something much larger that happened. Mike Brown
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  Speaker 2: had happened in between. Like there was a huge groundswell
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  Speaker 2: of movement. And now it was one thing when LeBron
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  Speaker 2: James is like taking a picture with the hoodie on
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  Speaker 2: with the squad, which was a really big deal at
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  Speaker 2: the time.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: The idea that that man would take what amounted to
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  Speaker 2: a 21st century stand.
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  Speaker 3: Was a huge thing.
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  Speaker 2: Then what Kaepernick did, as you said, was a truly
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  Speaker 2: radical act, because what LeBron did was not radical. That's
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  Speaker 2: not an insult to him, but like, those t-shirts and things,
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  Speaker 2: that stuff was not radical. This right here was actual, factual, radical,
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  Speaker 2: and he did it, and then we got to 2020,
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  Speaker 2: where as a nation, everyone was so vulnerable that the
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  Speaker 2: majority opinion at one point that summer was that Black
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  Speaker 2: Lives Matter was a was a positive statement.
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  Speaker 3: That shit ain't last for long, but it happened.
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  Speaker 2: In that moment, it happened and this dude was vindicated
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  Speaker 2: and it felt like we only saw him on the
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  Speaker 2: occasional photograph picking up an award. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Well, you know, the idea of him being vindicated is
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  Speaker 1: a comical one to me too. I just got invited
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  Speaker 1: to a private screening of a Basquiat film that's going
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  Speaker 1: to come out in 2027 and it brought back to
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  Speaker 1: mind Michael Stewart because that was a part of the
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  Speaker 1: movie and A very influential moment on Basquiat's life. Michael Stewart,
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  Speaker 1: the dancer and graffiti artist and model who was killed
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  Speaker 1: by the police in 1983. You know, we have all known,
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  Speaker 1: and I'm using the collective we of me and Bomani
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  Speaker 1: and the people like us, what has been going on.
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  Speaker 1: There needed to be no vindication. The difference, of course,
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  Speaker 1: is that we're in a modern world where everything's captured
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  Speaker 1: on camera. And that was what was vindicated, that there
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  Speaker 1: was no way you could deny this or so we thought.
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  Speaker 1: But I think that is also on the flip side
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  Speaker 1: what hindered the movement is that the camera is so involved.
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  Speaker 1: And so you talked about LeBron taking a photo with
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  Speaker 1: a hoodie. I mean, everything becomes a moment, a spectacle,
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  Speaker 1: something to be captured, to be digested and commodified. And
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  Speaker 1: I think that hurt him and hurt us. Post Kaepernick
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  Speaker 1: and post George Floyd, you're right. Everyone was acquiescing to
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  Speaker 1: some extent, at least on a superficial level, like places
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  Speaker 1: that you would never have believed were releasing statements about
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  Speaker 1: police brutality and the importance of Black life. And sure,
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  Speaker 1: we knew in real time, we suspected at least that
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  Speaker 1: it was superficial, but it felt like there was a
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  Speaker 1: moment of vulnerability in society where we could get in
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  Speaker 1: and grab a little bit of leverage. And what we
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  Speaker 1: did instead, I think, is we settled for photo ops.
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  Speaker 1: We settled for commercials with Cadillacs. And we settled for
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  Speaker 1: creating what I think in some ways is a black
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  Speaker 1: managerial class that for a brief period sucked up very
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  Speaker 1: small sums of money. And in that way, we rendered
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  Speaker 1: activism and the spirit of it very impotent. What we
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  Speaker 1: did is we asked people to take their social capital
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  Speaker 1: and their real energy. If you remember that moment, the
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  Speaker 1: energy was real on college campuses, in the streets, just casually.
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  Speaker 1: People had a real energy for change. They were fed up.
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  Speaker 1: They were angry. And this was a multiracial thing as well.
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  Speaker 1: And we said, why don't you reinvest that social capital
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  Speaker 1: and product? And this is where, I'm not going to
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  Speaker 1: say it's unforgivable, but this is where I really hope
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  Speaker 1: for more from Colin Kaepernick because he was a very
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  Speaker 1: specific sort of face of what we thought could be
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  Speaker 1: a movement. And sometimes when you're being distracted by 100
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  Speaker 1: people pitching product at you, you need someone to stand
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  Speaker 1: up and remind you of what the mission is. And
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  Speaker 1: I thought even if he wasn't totally equipped for that,
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  Speaker 1: there had to be people around him. And maybe, you know,
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  Speaker 1: as a football player, he would understand that you have
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: to assemble a team to put you in the best
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: position to lead. And I feel we missed out on that.
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  Speaker 2: You know, I think what you said there is so
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: interesting because it gets us to, I think, a broader context.
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  Speaker 3: That I don't think I fully appreciated in the moment.
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  Speaker 2: But the kneeling and the things around it and what
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  Speaker 2: became the enduring symbols were... ready-made for the era of
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: social media, right? Like the Neil Postman point about television,
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  Speaker 2: or any technology really, that once you add it into
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  Speaker 2: a society, it is not that society plus the technology.
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  Speaker 2: The society grows around the technology, right? And so our
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: perceptions of how social media could be used are much
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  Speaker 2: different now than they were then. Like now it feels
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  Speaker 2: like it's kind of readily understood that it is a
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  Speaker 2: vehicle for sending shit out, right?
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  Speaker 3: We can get stuff out really fast.
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  Speaker 2: We acknowledge that it's manipulated by so many factors, but
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  Speaker 2: they got people so hooked on that dope that they
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  Speaker 2: still stay on it.
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  Speaker 3: In the beginning, when not only did it.
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  Speaker 2: Feel a bit more organic, I would also argue that
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: it was a bit organic, right? Because the infrastructure around
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: it had not built out. You have like 2009, 2010
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: around this time, and the world saw the Arab Spring
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: situation happen online. And it reinforced the ultimate optimism that
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: this This would be a democratic space and good causes
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: could now use these technologies to get together, to rally,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: so forth and so on. Right. Like that was this
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: was going to be the way to make the world
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: a better place and it will make things so much cheaper.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: And again, with the idea that. Absolutely, the sharing of information,
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: both in quantity and quality, was a was a positive.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: There was no argument against it. We wanted as much
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: stuff out there as we could possibly have, and then
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  Speaker 2: it all goes. And so you progress, and you also
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: see the Mike Brown, Trayvon Martin, all of that, the
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: movement around police is also a movement that grows around
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  Speaker 2: social media. And yes, there have always been slogans. There
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: have always been catchphrases. There have always been visions and images.
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  Speaker 2: But these caught on so quickly. They would bounce, and
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  Speaker 2: they would go, and they felt like something was really happening.
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  Speaker 2: And then it kind of crest with Kaepernick and the kneeling,
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  Speaker 2: as you talk about, almost became counterproductive because then it
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: got to a point where it almost became a purity
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: test that no matter what somebody thought, if they were
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: not kneeling at some football game, then they clearly were
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: not down with the cause, right?
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  Speaker 3: If they were.
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: Now not doing something during the national anthem, then that
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: came to mean something far more than it actually did
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  Speaker 2: Because in fact, we saw Jerry Jones take a knee.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: On one hand, and me and Joel talk about this
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: a lot, and I think he's correct. The fact that
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: they got Jerry Jones to do that in the first
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: place is a sign of victory, right? But it also
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: wasn't terribly different than when you get to school and
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: the white boys start wearing the same shoes as you.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Might be time for you to get a new pair
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  Speaker 2: of shoes.
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  Speaker 3: Partner, right?
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  Speaker 2: But nobody came to that next place. Nobody came to
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  Speaker 2: the point of being like, okay, so where do we
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  Speaker 2: take this? Instead, I think it wound up getting lost
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  Speaker 2: in this world of social media that leads to what
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  Speaker 2: you talk about when we get to 2020. The face
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: and the voice of the anger of 2020 was not...
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: Forget about just specifically Colin Kaepernick. It was not even
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: someone like Colin Kaepernick. It was not someone echoing Colin Kaepernick.
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: It was somebody working at an office on.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: A Slack account.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. You know... I can't think about kneeling without
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: remembering Pelosi and crew. Oh, yeah.
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  Speaker 3: That happened.
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the kneeling and many other things associated with Kaepernick
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  Speaker 1: and Floyd and what we thought was burgeoning movement became
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: sort of like a Malcolm X hat and a medallion
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: back in the day. It was something to wear, you know,
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: and in that way, again, it was rendered impotent and symbolic,
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: and that was frustrating. I wrote something for the Chronicle
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: of Higher Education with another professor named Rich Purcell about
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: the fact that Ben and Jerry's had released a stronger
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: statement condemning police brutality than almost all of the universities
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: across America. Right. And that was an interesting moment because
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: on the one hand, the products were getting out in
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: front of messaging and they had some messaging that was
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: somewhat strong. And that was encouraging. But on the other hand,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: it wasn't even that significant. And for them to outdo
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: the universities, let us know what the game was. Right.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: And this is what you said. You said that the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: strongest activism and the posturing was coming from some brother
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: on Slack or some white boy on Slack. Right. And
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: at that point, I think we both knew and many
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: of us knew that we were transitioning into an era
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: where blood had been reduced to ink and sloganeering. And
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: we were in a lot of trouble. Yeah.
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: And people have really truly come to believe that like
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: social media was the place for a stand. And if
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: you did not take a stand as someone who used
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: to be on social media a lot and then gradually retreated, it.
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  Speaker 3: Was just like, nah, I don't think this is, this ain't,
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: this isn't really doing the thing. Right. It's, it's just not.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: And I don't want to pretend as though there weren't
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: like some people in the street and there weren't other people,
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: you know, people that, that were doing things like, But
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Kaepernick had become the rare mainstream radical figure. And that
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: was the thing about him having the platform of the NFL.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: One of the points I've always made is that other
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: cats did not stand their national anthem. Marshawn Lynch, for example,
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: out here selling everything known to man.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: That's its own.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: The documentary I would love to watch is that one
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: right there. But he never put words to what he
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: was doing. And as a result of not doing that,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: he could still exist. Kaepernick is the one guy who
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: did not ask for permission, right? But at the same time,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: Mahmoud Abdul-Rahman didn't ask for permission and he never got
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: that famous. He never had everybody have his back in
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: his cause because there was no social media machine to
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: go out there to push it for him, right? I
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: always say about social media, and I say this, I
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: can talk to you about this and like a lot
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: of other people who are guests on this show will
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: talk about this.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: We talk on the telephone. And the reason is I
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: had just come to this.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: Conclusion about friendship that so many of us were using
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: social media and text to make friendship easy and not
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: making an actual investment in the relationship. How hard is
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: it to call somebody? It's hard to call somebody on
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: happy birthday when you just gonna send them a text, right?
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: Like I realized at.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: A point that we were, Social media was stripping us
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: of some of the essence of the gestures that we
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: engaged in.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: And it became too easy. And so anybody could do it.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: It becomes more performative. It becomes more superficial. I say
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: that to say that the existence of these platforms and
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: the fact that people can see them so often stripped
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: away the importance of the gesture itself.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: Because it just fell in.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Line with all the other stuff that we dump out
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: into this space and all these other ways that we
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: choose and we decide that we're going to make it easy.
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: And so it's disappointing that Colin retreated.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: But hey, man, you almost got to wonder if him
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: if you're him and you look around to be like, shit, what?
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: Nobody else coming out here.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You said a couple of things that resonate with me.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: One is. you know, I never really thought of Marshawn
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: Lynch as the modern George Foreman, but he really, like
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: he's been, he's been transformed. Uh, although he doesn't look
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: as safe, like George seemed to physically transform.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: He became an entirely different person.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah. He looked cuddly. He even looked lighter. I don't
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: even know how to happen. He started looking more light
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: skinned and safe to me, but Marshawn Lynch still looks
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: the same, but you're right. He, he, he's become a
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: lovable pitchman. Um, You know, the thing that social media
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: did too is that it makes things move so quickly
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: and it makes you want to participate. And thinking and
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: having an opinion is something you have to earn. And
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: it takes process and it takes patience. And so social
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: media gave you access suddenly to these scripts. You didn't
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: have to think about what you felt. You learned what
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: the correct opinion was by processing all these posts very quickly.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: And so there are a lot of people who leaned
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: into saying the right thing. And let me clarify what
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: I mean by that. Your homie, Coates, has been on
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: a bit of a media run. Something that I really
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: appreciate about him is that he's so plain spoken. And
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: sometimes people take that to mean that someone isn't especially
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: articulate or eloquent. But it's actually with Coates, he's clearly
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: hyper-intelligent and analytical, but his arguments lean on moral clarity.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: And that's what I love when I hear him speak.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: I think to some extent, I will attribute this to
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: the success of Barack Obama, but also this sort of
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: downloading of scripts from the internet that you repeat ad
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: nauseum because they sound good. Most people came to lean
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: on how ornate their arguments were. And so they said nothing.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: These were empty statements, right? But they sounded good and
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: they made people feel good. Kaepernick didn't sound good. He
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: made people feel uncomfortable. Coates sounds good and he makes
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: people feel uncomfortable. That's how you were supposed to feel.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: When I saw universities and we talk about Wrangler jeans
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: and all these brands, borrowing the rhetoric of what people
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: were claiming was a revolutionary moment. When I saw them
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: eagerly leaning into pronouns and BIPOC and whatever other phrases
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: and catchphrases were coming out of this movement, I knew
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: we were in trouble because these places don't ever eagerly
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: lean into anything unless they know that these are safe
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: things to lean into. And maybe Colin looked around and said,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: This isn't going to work. Or maybe, and I think
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: we can forgive him if this is the case, maybe
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: his spirit was in the right place, but he didn't
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: have the intellectual heft and the leadership skills socially to
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: take it anywhere else. But I wish, because he did
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: do things, right? He did do a documentary. And that
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: suggests to me a willingness to to broadcast his message
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: and to stand behind it publicly for longer than the
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: moment that he was in. So I do wish, again,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: that he had found the right advisors so we could
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: hear his voice and the clarity of his call. Because
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: now it's left to interpretation. And once your message is
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: left to interpretation and you're not speaking anymore, it can
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: go in so many different directions. And this is where
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: we are. I have no idea what he's doing at all.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Yo, that is, I think, the biggest thing for me is,
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: I am assuming, like he still does the Know Your
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Rights camps and things like that. I am assuming I
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: know what Colin Kaepernick thinks about the world right now.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: The internet has told me I cannot assume that where somebody.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: Started is going to be where they end, right? I
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: don't know.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: And I am reticent to assume or ascribe any belief
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: to him because we have not been put in a position.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: What I do see is I look up and he's
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: working with a company that wants to use AI to help,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: kind of like revolutionary moments, I suppose.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: And it's like, huh, ain't that something?
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: I have questions, but there are minimal circumstances and situations.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: where you get to ask him the questions, right? And
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: I think that leads right exactly to what you said
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: in terms of leaving things open to interpretation. I want
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: to go right back to something you said just a
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: second ago, though, like talking about Wrangler jeans. For people
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: who don't know the Wrangler jeans story, I tell this
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: one just to let you know what an interesting time it.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: Was in 2020.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Drew Brees got himself in trouble because he hit the
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: quarterback button when somebody asked him about standing for the
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: national anthem. And he was like, I believe we respect America.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: But it was while shit was popping. Malcolm Jenkins actually
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: got on and said, fuck you.
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: To Drew Brees, which was a wild thing to do.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: But he got on and said that because everybody was
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: so mad and you had to say something on social
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: media at that point.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: Anything like that.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: And I got on my show. And I can't remember
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: if I said it on the show or I said
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: it on Twitter. I probably said it on Twitter. Back
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: when I used to tweet storms. And I was making
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: the point that you got to understand not everybody's money
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: is tied up in saying black lives matter. Not everybody's
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: money is tied up in telling us that they there
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: for us in this time. I remember when my boss
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: at ESPN called me to tell me, thank you for
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: being there.
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: What I was doing for the company.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: Didn't stop that pay cut. I took a couple months before.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying? I was doing that shit
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: back then too. But anyway, um, That was what the
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: time was. And I was like, look, man, you got
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: to remember about Drew Brees. Drew Brees don't get his
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: money off of this he, him, she, him. That's not
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: where his bread come from, right? His bread come from
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: real tight jeans. That's where he get his money from.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: I looked up the Wrangler Twitter account. I was like,
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: they ain't sent no tweet in how many days? They
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: sent one the next day. letting us know that the
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: 15 brothers that was wearing Wranglers, they had their backs.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: They let us know.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: And that's what I was like, guys, do you see
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: what's going on here right now? This don't mean nothing
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: no more. It is out of control. Say what you
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: want about Kaepernick. There was never a time that what
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: he said didn't matter.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, have you ever seen Cheers?
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: There was an episode of Cheers that has stuck with
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: me throughout the years where all of the bartenders, and
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: I guess Carla's a waitress. They wanted a raise, and
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: each one after the other went into the office to
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Rebecca to request a raise, and she said, sure, I'll
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: give you a raise. Phew, I thought you wanted a title.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Wait a minute, what's this title thing? Walked out of
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: there and said, well, I didn't get a raise, but
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: now I am the senior executive bar gender, one by one.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: They got talked into titles rather than getting the bottom
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: line up, right? And there's something about that era, about
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: this era that just passed that mirrors that. They taught
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: us in the titles. They taught us into platitudes and
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: statements from Wrangler genes. And as we were collecting the
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: titles and in the commercials and on the TV shows
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: and running these bizarre, almost S & M sort of
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: sessions at universities, Self-help sessions where we tell people how
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: to be not a racist or maybe a better racist
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: who knows how to articulate their racism, right? While that
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: was happening, I think a lot of these people who
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: fell in corporations, who fell browbeaten, they were loading up
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: for the backlash. And we're seeing that now. And I
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: think about this in two ways. This Jason Arday situation,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: rest his soul. You felt a real bloodlust when they
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: found out that he was a fabulist. A bloodlust in
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: how vicious the condemnations and endless they were. Because people
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: have been sick of placating Black people in their minds.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: And now we're seeing the backlash of it. On the
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: other hand, the other thing is he's not here to
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: say anything and he never got to say anything in
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: his defense in that brief window when he was. And
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: this is where I bring him back to Kaepernick. When
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you don't speak and when you can't speak, you're not
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: a person anymore. You become an ideological weapon for either
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: side to wield for its purposes. And that, I think,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: is one of the grand tragedies of Kaepernick. Once you speak,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: you take away everyone else's ability to manipulate who you
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: are as a figure. You can't see that.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: Coming up next, we're going to talk about what is
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: the state of athlete protests now, 10 years after Kaepernick. Look,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: if your supplement shelf needs a reset.
• 27:38
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• 27:39
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• 27:44
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• 28:13
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• 28:18
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• 28:20
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: Back with my man, Jason England.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: And one thing I think about going back to 2020,
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: the place where we really saw like protests with in sport, honestly,
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: was with the college players when they were pushing back against,
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: you know, why are we playing during covid given the
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: little that we know at this moment? We you know,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: we saw a push toward unionization and the likes that
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: we hadn't seen like they did. It showed an influence
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: of the time, at least to me in that moment,
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: what we had. That was also when them boys put
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: Ty Roger Goodell up in the basement. Remember when he
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: had to make that hostage video? They had it was
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: a wild time, man. It was the one time where
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: it felt like we had a chance. And I think
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: that people misunderstood that he was going to stay on
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: their necks forever. And maybe they was never going to
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: allow it. But that was that was what it had
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: to be.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: Like the story I tell about how we may have.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: Been sold, how people may have sold themselves short is
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: when the NBA cats had all the things on the
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: back of their shirts in the bubble. And people laughed
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: at how corny some of them were and how they
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: felt that they were kind of muted and, you know,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: kind of fangless. And the league was very clear. We
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: didn't turn anything back. Like nobody, nobody tried to get
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: burn baby burn past them. Right. Nobody tried to sneak
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: one back. Like there had been so much work done
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: on athletes that honestly. they had regulated themselves at that point.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: And they had the understanding of what it was that
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: they could and could not get away with.
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: But it is interesting that like right.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Now things feel societally as tumultuous as they ever have.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: And let us remember the cops never stopped killing us.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: Like the numbers on that, if I'm not mistaken, have
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: been fairly static.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: That part never changed.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: But you don't hear about anybody or any of this,
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: even like from the same people that we heard from 2020.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: LeBron's in the bubble with a shirt that says leader
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: to society. You don't hear that much from LeBron about
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: these types of issues anymore. You don't see the the
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: pushbacks against Trump that you saw in the first term.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: You don't see those things anymore from Trump.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Um, and it's part of why I guess I look
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: at Kaepernick and I don't say nearly as much, you know,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: where you at as much as how were you the
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: only one?
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: That's a great question. Um, you know, how did, how
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: did we, how was it one? How was he the
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: only one? And two, how has it been reduced from
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: that time to what we have now where you, instead
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: of that minimal, um, activity on behalf of professional NBA players,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: for instance, right. The shift now is that mostly when
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: we hear from NBA players, we're hearing from them defending
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: their investment in like drone companies, right? Or we're hearing
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: someone like Kyle Kuzma talk explicitly about the positive aspects
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: of AI or speaking out against Mom Donnie, right? Like
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: that's such a sharp turn. And that's kind of shocking.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: In the WNBA where I wrote about this in the moment,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: I thought there was a moral clarity that marked that
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: league and the players and what they were doing during
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: that era, during Floyd and Kaepernick. And now what you
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: see mostly from them is this sort of infighting and
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: this almost social media talking point battle over who represents
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: and who gets more media attention, right? I don't know
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: why that spirit died. I do think that when you
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: use the internet, you get the... illusion of having done
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: something without actually having it cost you anything. And it
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: could be possible that we got addicted to that. And
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: after a while, the one thing we did not want
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: was for anything to cost us anything. And the one
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: thing that we did like was the feeling that we
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: did something rather than actually doing anything. And once that
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: got addictive and normalized, there wasn't really any other place
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to go. It felt like, and I think this is
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: where cameras and media come into play, It felt like
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: almost like a movie. We had done that part. We
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: saw that part and we closed that chapter. And now
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: we're moving forward. As you're saying, the statistics tell a
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: different story. Our reality tells a different story. Certainly politically,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: our reality tells a different story. Who said anything about
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: what happened in Minneapolis outside, like anything really strong outside
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: of Wimby? And even Wimby seemed to be on the leash.
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: But it took a man from France. to speak out
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: against a citizen being shot by, you know, what some
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: people might even call a Gestapo-style police force, right? I
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: think Anthony Edwards, who I love, one of my favorite
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: players in the NBA, he was very careful to generalize
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: in his statements about that. And so I think that
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: people saw, hey, they're still handing out checks. We moved
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: on from that, and there's no need to go back
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: there spiritually. That doesn't bring anything good into my life.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: And Kaepernick there is a shining example. His silence actually
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: turns him into not just a martyr, but someone who's
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: been cut off. He has no real presence. So what's
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the reward for taking his route?
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I can.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: I raise the question also of the role a changing
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: media plays in this, because we made Colin Kaepernick front
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: page news. from through 2016 season through the 2017 season, right?
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Like we put Trump and all those things at the front.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: These were important things that you, Should pay attention to.
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: And by the way, things that absolutely got traction and
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: attention and ratings because people are addicted to the rage.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: I don't know what somebody would have to do to
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: make that the lead on any of the ESPN or
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Fox shows anymore.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: They just talking ball like the stick. The sports people won.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: I've said this many times and I'm not saying it
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: like it's good, bad or anything else.
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: I'm just telling you. They won out on this.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: The media does more than ever to try to just
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: talk about the games themselves, the people that are being hired.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: We went from 10 or 15 years ago when there
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: was a real push to hire people. I would argue
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: that I was probably one of them, not simply about
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: their ability to talk about.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: Sports, but to also talk about a larger world.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: And sports coverage has become very, very, very narrow subsequent
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: to that.
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: And I wonder in some ways.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: How much of that is truly a response to Kaepernick
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: because of how truly effective it was proven that he
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: had been. Like for those NFL guys, those owners, man,
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: they were like, all right, so what do we do here?
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Keep in mind, these people couldn't wait to give Michael
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Vick a job.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: And even no matter how mad Kaepernick made people, he
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: ain't make them as mad as Michael Vick did. Yeah.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: And they were still like, nah, brother, we'll find a
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: place for you to lay low on the roster for
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: a year, but you come back. We'll find something to
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: do with you. They got Kaepernick out of there and
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: made it clear. Think it can't happen to you?
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: Well, then it do.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. I think we mistook visibility for progress. And
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: the cynical part of me wants to say, strategically, There
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: were several people in power and institutions at TV networks, politically,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: et cetera, who understood, hey, we need to get a
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: handle on this and we are not sure what to do.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: And we need a temporary delay while we figure out
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: how to make sure this never happens again. That's a
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: very cynical view because some of this is organic and
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: evolves naturally and it's not really planned. There's no grand
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: conspiracy oftentimes. But that's how it feels because suddenly we
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: went from, as you said, hyper-visibility. But if you look
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: beyond and beneath the visibility, there wasn't a great investment.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: I think about this in literature too. Suddenly they were
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: giving prizes out to every Negro who could write his
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: name on a page. In my industry, people were going
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: from bloggers to award-winning writers with multiple year book deals
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: over six figures. What people don't understand is it was
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: a minimal investment. They don't understand how much money is
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: actually in these industries, right? That was easy to pass
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: off to people. Wow. Everyone regrouped and strategized. And I
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: hate to say this, I don't want to sound like
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: a total conspiracy nut, but it seemed like they were
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: figuring out how to make sure nobody would be around
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: in the aftermath. Because I look at ESPN, where you were,
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: I look in the industry where I work in literature,
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: and I see how many people lost their jobs as
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: top editors and heads of publishing companies. And I see
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: how the book deals have dried up and all those
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: people who had all the tweet storms, who were visible
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: in our lives every day, the algorithm on Twitter took
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: care of them. And none of these people are around.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: So that temporary visibility, didn't really add to their bottom
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: line the way they thought it would. That fast money
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: slowed up. And now there are none of us to
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: discuss these very real issues on air or in any
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: other public forums. That's been minimized. And you look at
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: it and it feels like we lost something major. That's
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: not coming back. But maybe I'm wrong because these things
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: do swing like a pendulum. I'm curious. You've been in media, obviously.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Do you see this reemerging?
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: I am trying to figure out what it would take
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: or if you would ever put a person in position
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: who would allow such a thing to happen.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Like it's it's.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: It's impossible to feel like it was it feels top
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: down intentional.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: Like I operate of the general belief the audience is
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: never wrong. They're not always right. But the audience is
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: never wrong. But it didn't feel to me like the audience,
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: like there was those people who were talking about stick
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: to sports shit. They didn't mean it because the people
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: who said that the loudest love it when you don't
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: stick to sports, you just talk about stuff on the
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: other side. You know, like they don't they don't get that.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: But what in the world would have to transpire for
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: things to push back? I think there's another part of
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: it that's interesting about media. One thing that has gone
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: away is the general sports columnist. The idea that there
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: was someone whose job it was to write on opinions
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: and writing is still more substantial than putting things up
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: on video.
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: Writing it down whittles out how many people can do it.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: It becomes its own credibility check just because That requires
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: a certain level of effort and craft that turn it
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: on the camera, turn it on the mic is just
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: never going to have. Right. Well, who does that now?
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Whose gig is that? Whose position is it in sports
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: to enforce any sort of moral clarity?
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: Like I see people I get confused at what people
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: at this point in sports think is and is not
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: a cause.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Right. Right.
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: People think that enforcing the NBA salary cap right now
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: is a cause, a true matter of morality.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: I happen to disagree with that fact.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: On the other side, I see with NFL coaching and
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: race and people say they need to get rid of
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: the Rooney rule as if that's the moral issue. and
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: not the actual paucity of black and brown hiring. Like
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: within our world, I think our compass has been lost
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: about what matters and why.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: Well, there's been a degradation of discourse and it's been
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: reduced to these sort of clapbacks and, you know, antagonistic communication.
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: There is no nuance. And if you remove the people
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: who are supposed to be patient and clarify for people
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: what it is that's at the heart of this issue,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: which is to say people who understand the forces of history,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: who understand critical thinking, and who deliver to people a
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: sort of distillation of the major issues of the day.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: With them removed, what we just have are people yelling
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: at each other. Wow, everything is being looted. And I
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: guess my question for you, and it's a question I
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: ask myself, who are our leaders? Because to some extent,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: we were looking to Colin Kaepernick to be one, right?
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: And then we're questioning, why didn't he link up with some?
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: But who are our leaders?
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And he had the potential to be one.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: And I think he looked around and was like, hey, man,
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: that's a lot more of a job than I thought
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: it was.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: Which it is, by the way. Like, that's the thing.
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: Somebody be like, nah, man, I'm good on that. That
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: shit don't even pay.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Well, so many people got placements and platforms without doing
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: hard work, right? And I mean this, I'm not talking
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: about this from a capitalistic pocket-watching I mean, what are
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: your credentials and your bona fides? What movements have you led?
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: What organizations have you belonged to or led? That I
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: think a lot of people started to feel like, hey, man,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: this person got that. The easy way, why would I
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: do all this hard work and be a fool? But
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: that's because we reduced the idea of activism and leadership, again,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: to something capitalistic. not something that's blood, sweat, and tears.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: That means your fellow man is important, and there's a
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: concept of community and society. And I think social media
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: hasn't helped. It's given an illusion of community, people that
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: you don't know. But we're less connected than ever to
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: the people around us. And so it's harder to conceive
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: of what it means to be a leader. All we
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: see is the platform, and that's what we want. We
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: don't see what it takes to create one, to empower
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: people to be on one. What are the responsibilities that
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: come with the platform?
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like this is a time, and I wonder this,
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: given how much things have changed, Direction Media, everything else,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: what we have historically found is that figures like Kaepernick,
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: Kurt Flood, name any others, they wind up taking on
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: a different life down the line, and then they start
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: getting these Lifetime Achievement Awards from the same organizations that
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: have ostracized them at various points, or the publications that
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: ostracized them, so forth and so on. Call it 10,
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: 15 years from now, 25 years from now with Kaepernick.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Are we even going to be a society that takes
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: the time to look back and think about these things
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: in the first place?
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: Or does he just get lost in the wash?
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: Man, you know, I would have said when it was
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: happening in real time, I would have said, yeah, this
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: is the person who 20, 30 years from now, they're
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: going to be inviting to universities and, you know, remember
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: him quite fondly. I don't even know if that's a
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: place that we're at. We've shifted as a society. I
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: thought about this when it was happening, because the foil
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: to Colin Kaepernick was Pat Tillman for some people. Like,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: here's a football player who really sacrificed for his country,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: and that's what it looked like. But of course, Pat
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: Tillman's family didn't want that. And Pat Tillman, you know,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: was killed by friendly fire, right? Well, unfriendly fire. And
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: so we have a way of repackaging that. people we like,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: don't like, who died in circumstances that are inconceivable into
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: something that can be on the front of a Hallmark card.
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: And I imagined Colin with the neat afro would get there.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: But I don't think that we're even the old America
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: where we were nostalgic and we liked history without moral reckoning.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: I don't think we care anymore. Again, our day situation is,
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: The anger, the contempt that people have for a man
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: who most likely killed himself. Let me know that we're
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: not interested in any sort of moral reckoning, not even
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: a superficial one. And so I think Colin Kaepernick to
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of people is just an irrelevant, annoying figure.
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: And I don't see them trying to reclaim him.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: And then that raises the question of it then becomes
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: our job, right? Because I think part of the Kaepernick
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: story is all of us asking somebody else to do it.
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: Well, isn't he coming out back to the stage soon
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: to be in conversation?
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: The book is coming out.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: I thought he was coming to be in conversation and
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: tell his side of the story, which to me seems
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: strange in 2026. We've been waiting for that a long time.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: So I'll be hanging on every word.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: That also feels like a decision that's made by a publisher.
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: And what I mean by that is the same reason
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: I'm doing this podcast.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: It's been 10 years. I don't know if that's the calculation.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: I don't like that.
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: There was lots of time to do this when it
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: probably could have been more beneficial, but I also know
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: that boy was under siege, man. When it was bad,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: he was under siege and didn't ask for it in
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: the first place, didn't think it was going to play
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: out so I could understand the desire to step back,
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: like a very human part. But I am curious to
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: see when this book comes. I think people are going
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: to care enough to listen to these podcasts, obviously. I'm
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: not sure anybody else is going to do them, And
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: I'm curious what kind of coverage the book itself could get.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: What are the nuggets that are like, you know, those
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: pull the pull quotes that come out. Right. They're like, oh,
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: in this book, such and such said, da, da, da.
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: That's intended to sell it. What are those stories going
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: to be and will they be enough to kind of rekindle?
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: Because I agree with you. I don't think there's nostalgia
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: about this.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: No. No, the momentum died very quickly. And. I have
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: obviously a lot of black friends and I have a
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: lot of smart black friends and a lot of people
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: who I would say, you know, so to speak, are
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: tapped in, right? I don't know who watched that documentary
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: that he made with Ava DuVernay, right? So this isn't new.
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: Like the interest in him waned a long time ago
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: and the silence didn't help. The silence made a lot
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: of people think he had nothing to say. Someone who
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: did something as significant as what he did That documentary
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: shouldn't have died on the vine. No matter what you
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: think about it, whether you think it was great or
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: whether you think it was disappointing, I was very confused
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: by how few people had any interest in watching it.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: All this, by the way, while we're seeing a rise
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: in leftist politics.
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: Nothing is intended to make sense. Jason England, man. Check
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: him out.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Check out his work, Chronicle of Higher Education, Defector. Other places,
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: you're going to see a lot more coming from him very,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: very soon. My brother, I appreciate you.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Always a pleasure to rock with you both.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Appreciate you too.
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: Yes, sir.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: And ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: here on the right time. Done this a couple of
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: times a week during the summer. Mike McQuaid handles everything
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: behind the scenes. Thank you, sir.
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: Also, thank you to the good folks at Wave.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: This is the end of our third year with them
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: and thank them so much for everything that we've had
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: in these three years.
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: Remember, follow the right time.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: Subscribe, like, rate us, review us, give us five stars.
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: You only give us four stars. I'm inclined to believe
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: you are a hater. We'll talk to you guys in
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: a couple of days.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: Take it easy.
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: Thank you.