Michael Bennett knew that people would judge him.
He saw what happened to Colin Kaepernick after he took a knee during the national anthem — Bennett said earlier this summer he believes the quarterback is being blackballed by the league for the protest.
But after watching the violence in Charlottesville, he told reporters, he wanted to do something. And he knew he had a platform. Here’s what he told reporters, via the Seattle Times:
“First of all I want to make sure people understand I love the military — my father was in the military,” Bennett said. “I love hot dogs like any other American. I love football like any other American. But I don’t love segregation, I don’t love riots, I don’t love oppression. I don’t love gender slander. I just want to see people have the equality that they deserve and I want to be able to use this platform to continuously push the message and keep finding out how unselfish we can be in society, how we can continuously love one another and understand that people are different. And just because people are different doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t like them. Just because they don’t eat what you eat, just because they don’t pray to the same God you pray to doesn’t mean you should hate them. Whether it is Muslim, whether it is Buddhist, whether it is Christianity, I just want people to understand that no matter what, we need to stay together. It’s more about being a human being at this point.”
He told reporters he didn’t tell his teammates about his plans.
“I’m being vulnerable right now,” Bennett said. “There’s a whole bunch of people sitting at home judging me, but they will never get to this point where they can be vulnerable. Let people attack me because they don’t believe what I believe in, but at the end of the day, I’m being vulnerable to show every person that no matter [what] you believe in, keep fighting for it. Keep fighting for equality. Keep fighting for oppressed people. And keep trying to change society.”
Over the past year, critics have found it easy to yell about patriotism and what NFL players do or don’t understand about what they’re fighting for. There will be people who read Bennett’s statements and dismiss them, or more likely they won’t read them and will yell on Twitter or threaten to boycott games and maybe actually do it because he took a seat. There are going to be people who scream at me on Twitter for writing this post in the first place.
But there are much more unpatriotic things that happened in this country over the weekend than someone sitting for an anthem to draw attention to a cause he believes in, a cause we should all believe in. He backed up the protest with words that reminded us all that we’re in this together, reminded us all that to fulfill the promise of America that we must drive out hate and cherish acceptance and that he’s willing to take a risk to make our world a better place.
There’s few things worth listening to more than that.
