Written by Cindy Boren at Washington Post.com
When it comes to protesting the national anthem, some NFL players are being forbidden from taking a stand, according to one NFL player.
Doug Baldwin, the Seattle Seahawks wide receiver who led the team’s quest to find a unified way to protest police brutality against minorities, claimed that some owners “have taken a stand and told players to do certain things, which I think is egregious” in an interview with HBO’s Bill Simmons.
NFL ownership is overwhelmingly white; more than half the players in the league are black. Increasingly over the last few years, players have sought to express themselves, especially after police shootings of unarmed black men. The national-anthem protests, though, take place during the highly visible pregame ceremonies.
“There’s been owners that have told their players to do specific things or to not do specific things … regarding the national anthem and the protests,” Baldwin told Simmons on “Any Given Wednesday.” “The one quote that I was informed of was, ‘You’re going to stand on the line with your hand on your heart and you’re going to sing the national anthem because this is my stage.’”
This probably shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The NFL as a league seeks to suppress individuality, right down to fining players for the smallest uniform deviations — even for things like wearing pink in honor of a mother who died of breast cancer. And owners have long felt that the “stage” belongs to them, not to players whose careers will be brief.
Baldin didn’t offer any suggestions about which owners might have put the kibosh on the protests, which began when people began noticing that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick was remaining seated during the playing of the anthem at preseason games. Kaepernick has since modified his protest by taking a knee. The protests have spread across the WNBA, women’s soccer and the NBA, where players have linked arms during the anthem in the first week of preseason games.
Players like Baldwin embraced Kaepernick’s protest, but, like Kaepernick, Baldwin sought to make clear that the protest was focused at the racial implications of police actions and not at the military people who so often are part of the pregame ceremonies at NFL games. Baldwin, whose father was a policeman and has family members in the military, and the Seahawks came up with the idea of linking arms before the Sept. 11 season opener. The message they’ve sought to send has been one of unity.
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