Comparing the utterance of a racial slur at work to the act of kneeling one's own body is chalk and cheese, apples and oranges, shit from shinola. You pick the metaphor.
This is not that. Some may want it to be, like a soccer player wants a nudge in the penalty box to be seen as a UFC-style, ninja throat punch, so that the ref will give him the call and the subsequent free shot on goal, but, sorry.
A. In any other context kneeling is not considered a slur.
In any other context, kneeling would be treated as beseeching, imploring, deferring, begging or petitioning an authority, or someone whose favor is being sought (i.e. marriage proposal, religious, ceremonies, etc.). It is an acknowledgement of the significance of the view, input, response or blessing of the approached to a request.
It's damn near a curtsy. Is the woman pictured here, in blue, attempting to offend Queen Elizabeth?
It's only a slur to those who want to drown out the actual message, because that message is uncomfortable, and onlookers know that that's what your doing.
It's like children who think they become invisible by covering their own eyes, not understanding that everyone around them can not only see them, but, can see how backward their minds work.
It takes REAL political gymnastics, verbal contortion and mental acrobatics to re-imagine that as a perceived act of disrespect.
B. The legal rights of the NFL (and other sports) are, at best, unclear.
Not only has the NFL not yet determined that it can, will or even should force players to kneel, but, other sports may have to loosen THEIR policies, to make kneeling or standing the personal, conscience-based decision that the Supreme Court decided in 'WV Board v Barnette' that it should be.
Everybody keeps saying, "Just make 'em," as if it's a foregone conclusion that a team or the league would be in its rights to take that step.
You're probably familiar with the legend of the elephant that spent decades chained to a certain area, and, even when the constraints were removed, the elephant wouldn't move any further than the radius of the removed chain.
The thing about bluffing is that neither player knows, in the end, who would have won. So, while threats may be holding the emporer's clothes together for the moment, that is not to be confused with being in the legal right or having the right to enforce a rule.
The NBA had this issue with a number of players in the 90's and the outcome was settlement, not a league ruling. The NBA never actually demonstrated the force that everyone presumes they have. Perhaps they negotiated out of benevolence. Perhaps they didn't. Either way, they didn't MAKE anyone do anything.
MLB has just had a player kneel for the first time - Bruce Maxwell. The team response?
'The Athletics released a statement on Twitter shortly after the anthem, saying they "respect and support all of our players' constitutional rights and freedom of expression" and "pride ourselves on being inclusive."'
Major League Baseball didn't FORCE anything.
The Supreme Court decided in "West Virginia Board of Ed. v. Barnette" that the government cannot compel citizens to perform 'patriotic' acts (as if any forced act would be 'patriotic' in the first place).
People opposing the protests claim that, since an employer is a non-state actor, the employer CAN enforce patriotic acts.
In the same way that the Constitution forbids 'cruel and unusual punishment', deputizing a criminal organization, to inflict that same punishment on BEHALF of the government would not exonerate the government from culpability for that punishment.
That criminal organization would still be acting on behalf of the state.
That said, to what authority OTHER THAN the state itself, could a matter be referred if the players were still not complicit with league demands for patriotic acts, when state involvement is forbidden?
This is why owners don't push the envelope, no matter how much lip service they pay to low-brow, uneducated fans.
How many players could the league fire before the quality of the play in the league began to visibly suffer making play unwatchable?
C. The accusation of collusion is not to be confused with any expectation of, or sense of "entitlement" to, the right to play again.
It may just as well have been the decision of the NFLPA to pursue the case.
Colin may not feel any more "entitled" to a roster spot than the lady who won a multimillion dollar lawsuit for spilling a McDonalds coffee on her own lap felt 'entitled' to that money.
Perhaps the soap opera of emotions that people are trying to project on the kneeling issue is a distant second to the actual labor rights of employees, including players, who are accused of playing a game for a lot of money, on the one hand, but then wind up with CTE and quadraplegia, which even heavy industry workers manage to avoid. Maybe Kaepernick should have 'played' arc welder instead of QB.
People's language vascillates depending on how they want to contort the man's image.
D. There are a VARIETY of positive potential outcomes for a plaintiff besides the outcome requested in an action.
- Exposure of the Defendants' methods of operation:
Ralph Nader was only exploring the safety of automobiles in general when he discovered that auto manufacturers were keenly aware of how many lives they were sacrificing to directly avoid the cost of installing seat-belts.
Special Prosecutor Kenneth Star was only investigating a real estate complaint when he stumbled the unsavory habits of Bill Clinton and a now-famous intern. Suddenly, it was about stains on dresses and cigars, and he was impeached for that, not the anticipated course of the investigation.
For example, the NFL would be better off not having it uncovered that they have CTE liability calculation for how susceptible to concussions versus how litigious a player is. It would be best off not having to reveal pay decisions that involve assessing how much in PED's or pain killers a player has taken, as part of the actuarial calculation into what a team may or may not pay a free agent.
- Cash settlement:
It may be, for example, that if CK7 can simply establish that he is (a) a member of a 'protected class' (race, gender, sexual-orientation, religion, etc.) and had better stats going into his own free agency than, say, Andy Dalton had going into his, he should have been paid at least what Dalton got and need not report to a team to collect that past pay from the league.
No taking the field.
No boos from a hostile audience.
No overzealous defensive linemen 'teaching a lesson' during play.
Just. Cash.
- A clear policy for future players (in this sport and others):
E. This doesn't begin and end with Colin Kaepernick.
Like the soldiers who beached at Normandy, slaughtered in the thousands on D-Day, the first people suffer the most damage.
THAT'S why Colin Kaepernick doesn't have a job. Not because Jacoby Brissette is a better stand-in for Aaron Luck than himself.
The first people in get it in the neck, because Rulership 101 is to make an example out of the first people who try, in order to intimidate the rest.
We're past that.
We're now into the area where, if you fire everyone who kneels, there will begin to be a question about the athletic superiority of the players who remain. "Are these the best of the best, or just the ones who wouldn't stand up for themselves?"
The whole thing is wrong.
It's embarrassing that it only took a few decades and a prettier flag for the grandsons of people who opposed Germany's nationalism, saving the world, to want to adopt it in their home country for themselves.
It's past Homer Simpson "Doh!" wrong.
We're now into 'foreign-nations-that-America-itself-only-recently-liberated-from-this-exact-same-kind-of-blind-nationalism-are-now-making-fun-of-you-for-not-seeing-the-irony-of-your-ways" wrong.
That's the difference between someone who gets out of high school and doesn't know what to do with himself, ignoring history and trying to trade his I.O.U.'s for a 'you owe me', and someone who actually understands the principles and history of the nation whose values he claims to be willing to die for.
It's never the initial action with this stuff.
The initial action is always small: a seat on a bus, a glove on a fist, a kneeling position, a word out of place during a traffic stop.
The reaction, though, is bigger than Ben Hur, and that cannot be explained except for the perception fo a captive, 'give-them-an-inch-and-they'll-take-a-mile' approach to people who are supposedly 'free' or unindebted. It's a collective sense of ownership over people who allegedly have no owners.
The story is that people in America are free. Not just free to do the things that you don't feel like taking a contrived form of offense to.
Free.