The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World by Dave Zirin ’91. When Colin Kaepernick took a knee, his action sent ripples out through the social atmosphere provoking and revealing unexpected courage, cowardice, bigotry and tolerance. All across the land, high school football players, teenage cheerleaders, college team members and professional athletes felt the urge to take a moral position. As Mynk Richardson-Clerk, a college Lacrosse player, put it, “I refuse to stand for the anthem until this country stands for everyone.”
Dave uses the world of sports to provide an avenue of entry into the most troubling problems of society. This was certainly true in his Brazil’s Dance with the Devil. Here he lets the young protesters speak for themselves. They say that they are kneeling down because, ironically, they are standing up for something. Michael Lynn III is the first Black quarterback in a Catholic high school in Lansing Michigan. It takes a while, but he garners support from the stands and from teammates when he takes a knee. But what could prepare a young man for the viciousness of a rival team who called him a monkey and used the n word repeatedly? It was the Kaepernick effect that helped him cope. “I’m sure some colleges didn’t want to recruit me after I did this, but he [Kaepernick] literally lost millions of dollars over something he believed in his heart.”
Most of those interviewed in this book are Black, but not all. The white singer Leah Tysse took a knee when singing the national anthem for an NBA game. “You’re taking a risk, sometimes, to do that, but at the end of the day, I think you have to do what’s right.” The Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World by Dave Zirin ’91. When Colin Kaepernick took a knee, his action sent ripples out through the social atmosphere provoking and revealing unexpected courage, cowardice, bigotry and tolerance. All across the land, high school football players, teenage cheerleaders, college team members and professional athletes felt the urge to take a moral position. As Mynk Richardson-Clerk, a college Lacrosse player, put it, “I refuse to stand for the anthem until this country stands for everyone.”
Dave uses the world of sports to provide an avenue of entry into the most troubling problems of society. This was certainly true in his Brazil’s Dance with the Devil. Here he lets the young protesters speak for themselves. They say that they are kneeling down because, ironically, they are standing up for something. Michael Lynn III is the first Black quarterback in a Catholic high school in Lansing Michigan. It takes a while, but he garners support from the stands and from teammates when he takes a knee. But what could prepare a young man for the viciousness of a rival team who called him a monkey and used the n word repeatedly? It was the Kaepernick effect that helped him cope. “I’m sure some colleges didn’t want to recruit me after I did this, but he [Kaepernick] literally lost millions of dollars over something he believed in his heart.”
Most of those interviewed in this book are Black, but not all. The white singer Leah Tysse took a knee when singing the national anthem for an NBA game. “You’re taking a risk, sometimes, to do that, but at the end of the day, I think you have to do what’s right.”
There are plenty of events recorded here that are heart breaking. The backlash that some of the young people received reminds us of how far we have to go. They get messages that they are not American, that they should go ahead and kill themselves. But what is most heartening about this book is hearing the voices of young people from a variety of backgrounds and regional influences tell in their own words how much they want to be part of building a better America.
