Eric Reid’s decision to re-take his knee Sunday night in the wake of the Charlottesville disgrace provided in one very real and important way the expansion of the anthem story past Colin Kaepernick.
Reid, the San Francisco safety who knelt with Kaepernick last year and then decided he wasn’t going to do so this year because of the way the original message was distorted, knelt in Minneapolis Sunday night – and not for the reasons he did so a year ago.
A year ago, he knelt for teammate solidarity – before there was a Donald Trump presidency and before neo-Nazis began their latest attempt to “normalize” intimidation and public hatred. In that way, what Kaepernick began as a statement about resisting incidents of police brutality is reaching a new stage – resisting the newly vocal fascist elements in a society whose proudest moment was beating it down in Europe.
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Reid re-engaged himself knowing the lash of reaction a year ago; he caught a small percentage of the grief Kaepernick still receives, but deciding to re-up after weighing the cost is an indication that other athletes are finding that the cost is no longer too much to bear.
Reid represents a still-small fraction of American athletes, but it is growing rather than shrinking and in doing so creates the germ of an idea that involves separating the anthem at athletic events from the athletes themselves – in other words, playing it while the athletes are still in their locker rooms or clubhouses. Teams love lockstep uniformity from its athletes, and when players like Eric Reid regard their conscience as more important than the optic the anthem implies, the anthem itself starts to defeat that purpose.
And until the United States resumes living up to its stated goals – as is happening with by the generous and rhetoric-free flood relief efforts in Texas – that will continue to be true.