Megan Rapinoe, a star midfielder of the U.S. women’s national team, said she’ll likely never sing the national anthem again as the U.S. prepares to defend its World Cup gold medal this summer.
“I’ll probably never put my hand over my heart,” Rapinoe told Yahoo Sports. “I’ll probably never sing the national anthem again.”
The 33-year-old co-captain of the national team was the first white athlete and first female athlete to kneel during the anthem in 2016 in a nod to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began kneeling during the song to protest racial inequality.
Months after her first protest, the U.S. Soccer Federation began requiring players to stand while the anthem was played before games. Rapinoe has obliged but has stood with her hands at her side or behind her back.
She chided the federation for not having a conversation with her before the rule was imposed.
“We can actually have a conversation, instead of just telling me that it’s a privilege to pull on the jersey. Like, of course it’s a privilege for me to pull on the jersey. Part of that privilege is representing America, and representing America is representing all of America. So I feel like there was a major miss on that part, which is unfortunate,” she said.
She said it would “take a lot” to convince her to partake in “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the future, including criminal justice reform, narrowing the inequality gap, and advancing rights for the LGBT community.
“We just have such a disparity in this country in so many different ways, inequality in so many different ways,” she said.
Rapinoe, a lesbian, referred to herself as a “walking protest when it comes to the Trump administration.”
“I feel like it’s kind of defiance in and of itself to just be who I am and wear the jersey, and represent it,” she said. “Because I’m as talented as I am, I get to be here, you don’t get to tell me if I can be here or not. So it’s kind of a good ‘F you’ to any sort of inequality or bad sentiments that the [Trump] administration might have towards people who don’t look exactly like him. Which, God help us if we all looked like him. Scary. Really scary. Ahh, disturbing.”
