On Sept. 1, 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence against unarmed citizens. Ten years later, we are still debating the gesture when we should be examining the system that made it so costly.
What bears explaining is the system that can make silence economically rational — and make protest disproportionately costly for those challenging injustice.
Sport offers a particularly revealing window into this dynamic because athletes occupy an unusual place in American life. They are employees and entertainers, but also cultural figures whose labor creates enormous economic value. We celebrate them for transcending physical limits, yet often become uncomfortable when they use the visibility we have given them to challenge the limits of our democracy.
Consider how differently political and cultural expression can be received. Brandi Chastain's iconic celebration after the 1999 Women's World Cup final generated debate, but it also became a symbol of female athletic empowerment and expanded her commercial profile. Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker drew national criticism after a 2024 commencement address touching on abortion, LGBTQ+ issues, President Joe Biden, and women's roles in society; his career nevertheless continued, and he later signed a lucrative contract extension that made him the NFL's highest-paid kicker. San Francisco 49ers star Nick Bosa displayed a MAGA hat during a televised postgame interview in 2024, was fined for violating an NFL rule governing political messages on game day, and continued his career.
The point is not that Chastain, Butker, or Bosa should have been punished more harshly. The point is that the consequences imposed on Black athletes who challenged racial injustice have often been of a different order; often career-ending.
Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title and barred from boxing after refusing induction into the U.S. Army on religious and moral grounds during the Vietnam War. Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists on the medal stand at the 1968 Olympics to protest racial injustice and oppression. They returned home to hostility, threats, and professional hardship. Decades later, they would be celebrated for the courage that had once made them pariahs; even then, this recognition came without compensation.
Kaepernick belongs to that lineage. Whatever one thinks of his protest, the essential fact remains: he used a peaceful gesture to call attention to what he believed was an injustice; the professional and economic consequences were profound. Every athlete watching could not miss the message. You may have a platform. You may have wealth. You may even have constitutional rights. But exercising those rights does not mean you are insulated from institutions that can impose a career-ending price.
That is why the current debate about Black athlete activism should move beyond the familiar question, “Why don't more athletes speak out?” A better question is: What infrastructure exists when they do? Who makes certain that an athlete's political agency does not depend entirely on their willingness to sacrifice a career?
Recent controversies make the question more urgent. Former NFL player and broadcaster Ryan Clark said after leaving ESPN that he believed he had been perceived as “too Black.” He connected the dispute to his public support for the NAACP's campaign urging Black athletes to consider the political environment of states when choosing where to play. Whatever conclusions one draws about any individual employment decision, the episode illustrates the larger dilemma: Black athletes know that political expression can become inseparable from professional consequence.
This is not merely a sports problem. It reflects an older American accommodation. Slavery was abolished, but the racial hierarchy that justified it did not disappear with emancipation. It adapted — through law, custom, violence, exclusion, and, at times, the quiet pressure of economic consequence. The forms change. The underlying question of who may challenge power without paying an extraordinary price persists.
America's democratic promise has always depended on more than the freedom to hold an opinion. It depends on whether citizens can meaningfully exercise their rights without systems of power rendering those rights prohibitively expensive. If one group can be pushed out of civic participation, the danger does not stop with that group. The rule of law protects everyone precisely because it cannot be contingent on who currently holds power.
As Americans settle into another fall of football and basketball, we should remember that the athletes entertaining us are citizens before they are brands. We should protect their right to speak even when their speech makes us uncomfortable. And if history tells us that individual courage can be punished, then our task is not simply to ask for more courage.
Our task is to build institutions strong enough to stand with the athlete and shield them from the backlash that infringes upon all our rights.