brushfire"This, yes, this, it was always like this." -Stanley Koehler
REFLECTIONS OF AN EMPTY NESTER
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On Dec. 1, 1955, a woman named Rosa Parks, tired from a long day of working at a local department store, sat down on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala. The bus began to fill with passengers, with several white people standing in the aisle. The bus driver asked four of the black passengers to relinquish their seats and move to the back of the bus. All but Parks complied. When the driver asked her why she wouldn’t move like the others, she replied, “I don’t think I should have to stand up.” Flash forward to August 2016. Colin Kaepernick, a black quarterback with the San Francisco 49ers, sat on the bench in silence during the playing of the National Anthem. Unlike Rosa Parks, he wasn’t breaking any laws. He wasn’t arrested, thrown in jail or fined. In fact, no one even noticed. After several games, his actions attracted media attention. He explained he sat because of the oppression of people of color and ongoing issues with police brutality. Like Rosa Parks, who is reported to have said she was tired of giving in, Kaepernick, too, was tired — not physically, but in spirit. He sat not for himself, but for others. He sat to bring awareness and make a change. “This stand wasn’t for me,” he said. “This is because I’m seeing things happen to people that don’t have a voice, people that don’t have a platform to talk and have their voices heard, and effect change. So I’m in a position where I can do that and I’m going to do that for people that can’t.” From the beginning, Kaepernick insisted his peaceful protest wasn’t meant to disrespect the troops or the flag. In fact, he even changed his methods after talking to NFL long snapper Nate Boyle, a former Green Beret. On Boyle’s advice, Kaepernick opted to kneel instead of sit. Athletes kneel when players are injured on the field, out of respect for a fallen comrade or opponent. Many people kneel when they pray. What could be a more respectful and thoughtful posture, than to kneel in silence with a bowed head? Yet outrage ensued. Kaepernick was accused of being un-American. He sacrificed his career and livelihood, as team owners received angry threats from fans and he wasn’t picked up the next season. Regardless, even though unemployed, he continued to fulfill his pledge to donate $1 million to a host of charitable organizations. Rosa Parks, too, made sacrifices. By defying a bus driver and starting a 381-day bus boycott, she changed not only history, but the trajectory of her own life. Both she and her husband lost their jobs and were unable to find other work. She received death threats and fled with her mother — later followed by her husband — to Detroit to stay with relatives before moving to her own home. Parks would remain in Detroit until her death, heralded as the mother of the civil rights movement and awarded many medals of honor, including the NAACP's 1979 Springarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award. Today, when school children read stories about Rosa Parks, they learn about her courage in standing up against segregation in a peaceful, respectful way, no matter the cost to her personal safety. Kaepernick, too, was peaceful and respectful. So were the many players who joined the protests this year. Yet the president, in less respectful terms, said when a team owner saw a player kneel, he should “get that son of a bitch off the field.” Meanwhile, the vice president saw fit to spend an estimated $200,000 to attend a football game where the silent, peaceful protest was a given, only to leave in a carefully staged, self-serving protest of his own — on the taxpayers’ dime. Make no mistake: no one applauded Rosa Parks the day she refused to stand. Many were likely annoyed, as her actions delayed them from getting to their destination. Others probably thought she, like Kaepernick, should know her place. Who did she think she was, this “uppity” black woman refusing to stand for a white person as the law required? And then there were those so vehemently opposed to what she represented, they threatened her life and livelihood. In many people’s view, Kaepernick and other NFL players are out of line with their protests; their role is to perform for our entertainment. How dare they “disrespect the flag” and use their platform to draw awareness to the oppression of people of color? They are no more than “rich, spoiled athletes.” Apparently when a white person is rich, they owe their success to their own hard work, but when a black athlete, having overcome insurmountable odds in many cases, reaches the zenith of success in his chosen field — literally through his own blood and sweat — he is supposed to be grateful for all this country has given him. Today we universally commend Rosa Parks’ actions, forgetting that 62 years ago, they drew outrage — even death threats — before they resulted in change. This is what we ignore when we focus on the present: how future generations will remember our actions. Colin Kaepernick may never play professional football again, but history will look back on him — like Rosa Parks — as a hero and agent of change, deserving of our respect, our gratitude, and even a medal of honor or two.
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Mary Anne BrushJournalist, fiction writer, wife and mother |