Two weeks into Black History Month, the Wisconsin State Legislature was still quibbling over who should be mentioned in its official Black History Month Resolution as proposed by the Assembly’s Black Caucus. When voted on, a revised version passed and made breaking national news. Like the Foxconn debacle, lame-duck legislation that included voter suppression and other attempts to undermine the newly elected Evers administration, it was the machinations of Republican legislators that made yet another embarrassing headline. It seems they purged the Resolution’s recognition of black civil rights activist, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke said Kaepernick was excluded “for obvious reasons.”
Yes, the reasons are indeed obvious. Kaepernick, in exercise of his constitutional right as an American, confronted the white supremacist Republican agenda and they’re not happy about it. And, having gerrymandered their way into power, they obviously control the narrative. Apparently, they also claim the right to approve whom Wisconsin’s African American community may celebrate as its heroes. The Resolution’s other two dozen names are certainly worthy of honor, but they are benign by comparison. If their activism ever rose to that of Kaepernick’s, it has long expired as a perceived encroachment upon our persisting systematic racism. Among them are George Edwin Taylor—who, in 1904 as a candidate of the National Negro Liberty Party, was the first African American to run for president—and The Oshkosh 94, a group of African American students. In 1968, they protested against Wisconsin State University-Oshkosh administrators for equal rights. Otherwise, the list includes various “firsts’ for black politicians, business leaders, educators and the like. It is obvious that, by excluding the “uppity” Kaepernick and deciding which black candidates they felt acceptable, Republicans effectively diminished the accomplishments of the others.
What is also obvious, however, is the reminder of the regime’s deliberate misrepresentation of Kaepernick’s protest. It casts him as an enemy of the state who, by kneeling during the National Anthem, disrespects the flag and, by extension, our armed forces. That strategy distracts from, and seeks to invalidate the protest’s true purpose, namely the condemnation of America’s endemic institutionalized racism.
It is obvious, too, that the Kaepernick effect has had its impact. For certain elected officials, that is both unacceptable and frightening as it threatens their power. In the past, white mob lynchings of innocent blacks and their contemporary 21st century manifestations could be largely ignored. But, thanks to Kaepernick’s high NFL profile and the ability of anyone with a cell phone to instantly document and disseminate information, blatant state violence against minorities has been exposed. Those factors have empowered adherents of social justice as well as forced the prosecution (albeit sometimes begrudgingly or reluctant) of those who, in the past, would have otherwise escaped any scrutiny at all, much less legal consequences.
When I wrote about Colin Kaepernick in this column, in September 2017, I stressed the LGBTQ community’s common struggle with that of the blacklisted quarterback. Republicans erasing his name from the State Legislature’s Black History Month Resolution serves as a jarring reminder of their desire to dismantle our social progress. Never forget, the White House scrubbed any mention of “LGBTQ” from its website even before the 2016 presidential inauguration ended.
