Howard Bryant Reassesses Colin Kaepernick's 10-Year Protest Legacy

3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Sep 1

Ten years after Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the 2016 NFL season, Howard Bryant argues the protest's legacy is less about one player's exile than a broader warning to athletes who challenge racial power.
Bryant says Kaepernick's silent anthem protest against police killings of Black people was mild by historical standards, yet it triggered a culture-war backlash that spread from the NFL into politics, media and other sports.
The column points to Kaepernick's effective banishment from the league, contrasting it with later moments when the NFL briefly conceded he had been right after George Floyd's 2020 murder, only for athlete activism to recede again.
Bryant frames January 6 as the endpoint of the Kaepernick era, arguing it exposed a double standard in how protest is judged and showed how thoroughly leagues and players had retreated into controlled, corporate-friendly gestures.
His broader conclusion is that the decade since 2016 has hardened anti-Black politics and media caution, making Kaepernick's case a lasting lesson in the costs of dissent rather than a story of institutional reform.