September 1, 2016: Colin Kaepernick Takes a Knee

September 1, 2016, 10 years ago: The San Francisco 49ers beat the San Diego Chargers, 31-21 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, in their last preseason game. Like any preseason game, the result doesn't matter. This time, it mattered less than ever.

Instead of standing while the National Anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner," was played before the game, 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick got down on one knee for the duration of the song.

He did this in protest of the many recent cases of police brutality. This earned him a bit of praise, and also a lot of nasty blowback from racists, who said he was "disgracing the Anthem" and "disgracing the American flag."

These people were not idiots, though many of the people they pander to are: They were liars. His gesture didn't have a damned thing to do with the flag. It had to do with white cops murdering unarmed black suspects who have been convicted of nothing, and knowing they will get away with it, because the men in power let them get away with it.

But they managed to redefine his protest, so that people didn't get the message that police brutality was a problem.

As a result, nothing changed. That was my only problem with the gesture: It didn't work. But he kept on doing it long after it became obvious that racist cops were still going to beat, and sometimes even murder, unarmed black people.

The people who attacked Kaepernick for his protest were not only disrespecting the 1st Amendment, one of the biggest things for which the flag stands. If they didn't respect his right, then the flag they claimed to love so much means nothing. By attacking Kaepernick for his protest, they were endorsing the cold-blooded murder of unarmed black people by white cops.

See? That's an extreme way to put it, but such a thing works both ways. If Kap is "un-American," then those people were racist. Or, they could have simply admitted that Kap has a point, and try to take that point away from him, by taking steps to solve the problem. That way, everybody would have won. Except the actual racists.

The 49ers went on to have a horrible season, going 2-14. Statistically, Kaepernick wasn't much below what he had previously done, including taking the 49ers to Super Bowl XLVII in the 2012 season. In 2016, he completed 59.2 percent of his passes, for 2,241 yards, 16 touchdowns and only 4 interceptions. He also rushed for 468 yards. The position of quarterback was not the 49ers' problem.

Their defense was the problem: Following a 28-0 win over the Los Angeles Rams in their regular-season opener, they allowed the 6-10 Carolina Panthers to score 46, the 7-9 Buffalo Bills to score 45, the 7-9 New Orleans Saints and the Atlanta Falcons to each score 41, the Seattle Seahawks to score 37, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to score 34, the Arizona Cardinals to score 33, the Miami Dolphins to score 31, and the New England Patriots to score 30.

Their only other win came near the end of the season, also over the 4-12 Rams, on Christmas Eve. Of their 14 losses, only 5 were within 7 points, so even if they'd won all of those, they still would have been 7-9 and missed the Playoffs. Head coach Chip Kelly and general manager Trent Baalke were both fired.

On New Year's Day, January 1, 2017, with Donald Trump, who called Kapernick "that son of a bitch" in a public speech, having ridden a wave of bigotry -- and Russian meddling -- to become President-elect, the 49ers lost their season finale to the Seahawks, 25-23. Kaepernick completed 17 out of 22 passes, for 215 yards, throwing a touchdown pass, and no interceptions. He was 29 years old, hardly old for a quarterback.

He has never thrown another professional pass, in any league on Earth. You see, in the NFL, you can do anything you want, as long as you don't embarrass your team or the League. Once you do that, they are done with you. And Kaepernick had embarrassed the National Football League. Other leagues, such as the Canadian Football League, didn't want him to do the same to theirs, so they didn't sign him, either.

He wasn't officially banned. He was -- pardon the choice of word, which originally had nothing to do with race -- blackballed. As Mike Lupica insinuated in his column in the New York Daily News, every single team organization in the NFL, some of whom desperately needed improvement at the position of quarterback, was sending a message: "We would rather go 0-16 for what would have been the rest of Colin Kapernick's career than have him play for our team."

A corollary to that message could have been, "We would rather have bigots pay for tickets, parking, food, souvenirs, etc. than take the money of Kaepernick's supporters." But even that didn't really enter into it. Every bigot is an asshole, but not every asshole is a bigot. For the team owners, this wasn't about money. If there is one thing that a rich person values more than money, it is control.

And the NFL team owners could not control Colin Kaepernick. So they acted as though he didn't even exist. They could not control him, so they denied him.

On February 2, 2020, with Jimmy Garoppolo as quarterback, the 49ers played in Super Bowl LIV, losing to the Kansas City Chiefs, 31-20. On January 20, 2023, the 49ers were in the NFC Championship Game, playing the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. In the 2022 season opener, Trey Lance was their starting quarterback, but he got hurt on September 18. From then until December 4, it was Garoppolo, but he was injured. From then onward, it was Brock Purdy, but he was injured early in that Championship Game. They had signed a previous quarterback, Josh Johnson, as an emergency backup after the December 4 game, and he stepped in for the NFC Championship, but left the game with a concussion in the 3rd quarter. Purdy was pressed back in for emergency duty, and threw 4 passes, completing them all, but for a total of 23 yards. The Niners lost, 31-7.

Colin Kaepernick was 35 years old. He should still have been the starting quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, a team that has won 5 Super Bowls. If he had been, they might have won a 6th Super Bowl, and even a 7th.

On November 3, 2026, barring a medical calamity, he will turn 39. To put that in perspective: Aaron Rodgers, now with the Pittsburgh Steelers, is 42; Joe Flacco, now with the Cincinnati Bengals, is 41; and the aforementioned Josh Johnson, also now with the Bengals, is 40. Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams and Kirk Cousins of the Las Vegas Raiders are both expected to start for their teams this season, at 38.

If Kaepernick wanted to make a comeback now, and were permitted to do so, he would be very rusty, but he wouldn't be the oldest quarterback in the NFL.

August 28, 1964: The North Philadelphia Riot

August 28, 1964, 60 years ago: A race riot breaks out in North Philadelphia, lasting 3 days, and revealing to the nation a latent racism that had infected "The City of Brotherly Love," and the birthplace of the nation and its Constitution.

At the time, the population of Philadelphia was a shade over 2 million, making it the 4th-largest city in the country behind New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The city was about 65 percent white, 33 percent black, and almost no Hispanics or Asians lived there. About 2/3rds of the city's black population lived in North Philadelphia, with most of the rest in West Philadelphia.

But being "the Birthplace of Liberty" didn't help much. When Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball in 1947, it was the city's baseball team, the Philadelphia Phillies, that offered the loudest and most noxious resistance. In 1950, the Phillies, with a young team known as the "Whiz Kids," became the last all-white team to win the National League Pennant. They didn't integrate until 1957, the last NL team to do so.

By 1964, the Philadelphia Police Department had made a conscious effort to hire black cops, and sending integrated patrol car units in black neighborhoods: One white uniformed officer, one black uniformed officer. And a civilian review board had been established to handle cases of police brutality. And with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 having just been passed, hopes were high.

But New York's Harlem had broken out in a race riot a few days before, following a case of police brutality. And it would be one of those that would spark the riot in North Philadelphia -- and another in Watts in Los Angeles the next year, and another on the East Side of Cleveland and another on the West Side of Chicago the year after that, and others in Newark and Detroit and other cities the year after that.

Still, this had been a good Summer for Philadelphia. There hadn't been much rain, the Jersey and Delaware beaches were clean in those days, and the Phillies were in first place. But things had already begun to go wrong on many fronts, and this riot was a convenient historical landmark.

On August 28, 1964, Odessa Bradford was driving her husband Rush Bradford, both of them black, and they started arguing. She pulled over at the corner of 22nd Street and Columbia Avenue. A police car pulled up to Ms. Bradford's car. Inside were black officer Robert Wells and white officer John Hoff. Ms. Bradford, still angry, began taking her anger out on the officers. They tried to remove her from her car. A man came to her aid by attacking the officers, and he and Ms. Bradford were both arrested.

As would later happen with Watts in 1965 and Newark in 1967, a rumor spread that a black person taken into custody by the police had been killed by them. In this case, the rumor was that it was a pregnant black woman, beaten to death. As with those two later cases, the rumor wasn't true, but by the time anyone found out, it was too late. Ms. Bradford was neither pregnant nor beaten, but she did say, "If that policeman had only treated me like a human being, none of this (rioting) would have happened."

Indeed, once she was released, Cecil B. Moore, President of the city's chapter of the NAACP, drove her around the neighborhood on a truck with a loudspeaker, allowing her to say, "I'm alive! I'm alive!" But it did no good.

I have looked for a reference as to whether Ms. Bradford is still alive, but I haven't found it. I have found 50th Anniversary articles on the riot from 2014, and none had an interview with her, so I suspect she was already dead by that point. Moore was elected to the City Council in 1976, and died in office in 1979. In 1987, Columbia Avenue was renamed Cecil B. Moore Avenue in his memory.

Cecil B. Moore

Moore's efforts were in vain. As with Harlem, many of the businesses in the mostly-black neighborhood were mostly-white-owned. (This led black business owners in later riots to paint "SOUL BROTHER" on their windows, in the hopes of their stores being spared.)

Depending on whose story you believe, nobody died in the rioting, or one person did. (If there was one, it was not Odessa Bradford.) There were 341 injuries, 774 arrests, and 225 stores damaged.

The epicenter, 22nd and Columbia, was about a mile south of Connie Mack Stadium, home of the Phillies since 1938, and home of the now-departed Philadelphia Athletics from 1909 to 1954. It had been named Shibe Park until 1953. The epicenter was also 7 blocks east of the site of the 1st home of the A's, Columbia Park, where they played from 1901 to 1908.

The Phillies were in Pittsburgh at the time of the riot, so it didn't result in any games being postponed. But it scared white fans, who may already have been wary of getting mugged coming down Lehigh Avenue out of the subway, or of their cars getting vandalized if they drove in.

The Phils had 15 home games left, not counting 2 rainout makeups, and the average attendance was 21,265. They really didn't have a home-field advantage the rest of the way, and this may have contributed to the 10-game losing streak that took them from being 6 1/2 games in 1st place with 12 games to go, to finishing 1 game out.

Philadelphia has had racial tension since. In 1971, Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo was elected Mayor on an openly racist platform. In 1975, despite having been caught in corruption, he ran for re-election on white backlash, and won again. He knew he couldn't run for a 3rd term, partly due to his 1977 overreaction to the black nationalist group MOVE. But the city's 1st black Mayor, Wilson Goode, had an even worse overreaction to them in 1985.

Today, the population of Philadelphia is about 1.6 million, ranking 6th behind New York, L.A., Chicago, Houston and Phoenix. It's about 40 percent black (mostly living west of Broad Street in North, West, and Southwest Philly), 37 percent white, 15 percent Hispanic, and 8 percent Asian. It is more diverse than ever before. But that underlying tension remains.

Class Is In Session

In the immortal words of Bruce Campbell, All right, you primitive screwheads, listen up!

"Super Bowl" is one word, not two.

If you've previously said that you were boycotting the NFL, shut the hell up about how the TV networks cover Taylor Swift's appearances at the games.

It's okay to root for the Kansas City Chiefs to win the upcoming Super Bowl, because it will make right-wingers upset over Taylor Swift, who wants President Biden to be re-elected.

It's okay to root for the San Francisco 49ers to win the upcoming Super Bowl, because it will make right-wingers upset that "liberal" "coastal" "elite" San Francisco beat "conservative" "Middle America" Kansas City.

Joe Montana is the greatest quarterback who ever lived. There are a few other legitimate candidates. Tom Brady is not one of them, because he was a compulsive and unrepentant cheater.

The Mets have not surpassed the Yankees. Not in any way. They don't even have the better ballpark food. Maybe they had that at Shea, but not since they both opened new ballparks.

Golf is still not a sport. Nor is figure skating. Nor is auto racing.

The Honeymooners is the greatest sitcom of all time. M*A*S*H is a better show, but it's not a sitcom. The Sopranos had its moments, but the vulgarity, and I don't just mean the language, hurts it. The Office was not funny, in either version.

Robert Pattinson is a better Batman than Ben Affleck, and David Corinswet will be a better Superman than Henry Cavill, if for no other reason than Zack Snyder will not be involved.

Elon Musk has never invented a damn thing, and he is not a genius.

It's pork roll. Not Taylor ham. Says who? Says Taylor, the company that invented the stuff, and sells more of it than anybody. They call it pork roll, because it legally isn't ham.

Pizza tastes better by the water. New York City is practically surrounded by water. And in New Jersey, the pizza is better down the Shore.

There is no such thing as a chicken cheesesteak. A chicken sandwich with the things you might put on a cheesesteak might be very good, but the word "steak" implies beef. No beef, no steak.

New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Chicago and San Francisco are better places to live than Florida or Texas.

Evidence matters.

You don't get to call something a "crisis" if you're not willing to try to stop it until a President who belongs to your party takes office. Especially if the last President who belonged to your party already failed to stop it.

I don't care if you're the biggest pop star in the world, or a sitting U.S. Senator who recently suspended your campaign for President: Don't tell a man you love him unless you actually do.

Stop caring about what bathrooms people use, and just make sure you wash your hands. More kids get molested by clergymen than "trans" people, anyway.

The race of the cop matters less than the race of the arrestee.

The history of all the peoples of America is American history, whether you like them, or not; whether you accept it, or not.

Class dismissed.