On Monday night, a dozen Cleveland Browns players took a knee during the national anthem before a preseason game against the New York Giants. Instead of standing, the players took a knee, and prayed.
Included in this group was the first white player to kneel during the anthem, Browns second-year tight end Seth DeValve.
The anthem-kneeling movement was started last August by former 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick because he didn’t want “to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” A small number of other NFL players joined Kaepernick throughout last season.
Why did DeValve decide to break the color barrier and join this movement?
“We took the opportunity to pray for our country and for the men and women in this country during that time,” Devalve said.
Couldn’t they have prayed for “for the men and women in this country” at another time, not during the national anthem, which runs about two minutes?
Aside from hoping to help “the men and women in this country” by praying, what else went into DeValve’s decision to kneel during the anthem?
“The United States is the greatest country in the world,” DeValve said. “It is because it provides opportunities to its citizens that no other country does. The issue is that it doesn’t provide equal opportunity to everybody. And I wanted to support my African-American teammates today who wanted to take a knee. We wanted to draw attention to the fact that there’s things in this country that still need to change.”
What needs to change? Where isn’t their equal opportunity for everyone in the United States? Moreover, how can the United States be the greatest country in the world, which provides opportunities that no other country provides, while simultaneously denying black citizens equal opportunity? Where does the logical consistency lie in that?
DeValve, a Princeton graduate, is married to an African-American woman, and is worried about his children’s future.
“I myself will be raising children that don’t look like me, and I want to do my part as well to do everything I can to raise them in a better environment than we have right now,” DeValve said.
What exactly is the environment now, and if there are issues, who created them?
DeValve gave scant details on what exactly needs to change during his post-game address.
“Just the other day, guys started to talk about it,” DeValve said. “We should come up with something that we can do and try to get as many people involved to show that we support Malcolm Jenkins, Michael Bennett, other guys around the league that are trying to use their platform and also doing things in the community to try to help and show we all want to try to come together as a nation and do better for ourselves.”
Once again, no specifics.
“I would say that we have an opportunity to do something with our platform,” DeValve said, “and I think it’s our responsibility to do something with it.”
DeValve seems like a decent young man whose heart’s in the right place, but if he wants to help fix problems, he probably needs to be more specific about what they are, and then offer some solutions.
Fortune cookie answers don’t help anybody.
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