NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league should have “listened earlier” to Colin Kaepernick, the former quarterback who started a movement of kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequity.
“I’m a big believer in dialogue, and frankly, I talk to my kids all the time and others about [how] you really don’t learn until you’re uncomfortable. … It gives you an opportunity to learn,” Goodell said at the start of an interview with former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho as part of his “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man” series.
Goodell was asked what he wished he knew now, in 2020, about the protests that Kaepernick and others started when they first began before the 2016 season. The commissioner said he wished he had known “just what was going on in the communities.”
“I didn’t know what was going on in the communities,” he said before noting that he has spoken with a number of players about issues of racial inequality since protests began across the country following the Memorial Day death of George Floyd.
Regarding Kaepernick, who has been a free agent since 2017, Goodell said the NFL should have listened to the issues he was trying to raise sooner.
“Well, the first thing I’d say is, I wish we had listened earlier, Kaep, to what you were kneeling about and what you were trying to bring attention to,” Goodell said. “We had invited him in several times to have the conversation, to have the dialogue, I wish we had the benefit of that. We never did. You know, we would have benefited from that. Absolutely.”
Goodell said he now believes that the kneeling is “not about the flag” and that “what our players are doing is being mischaracterized.”
“These are not people who are unpatriotic. They’re not disloyal. They’re not against our military,” he continued. “What they were trying to do is exercise their right to bring attention to something that needs to get fixed. And that misrepresentation of who they were and what they were doing was the thing that really gnawed at me.”
In June, as the nationwide protests were at their peak, Goodell had said he would welcome any team’s move to sign Kaepernick and “encourage them to do that.”
A summer of demonstrations across the country began after Floyd, an unarmed black man, was filmed being pinned to the ground by a white police officer as he pleaded for air. He later died. All four officers involved in his detainment now face criminal charges.
Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man: The National Anthem Protest- PT. 1
NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell, & I discuss Colin Kaepernick & the protests during the national anthem that polarized America. pic.twitter.com/PcL02732ys
— Emmanuel Acho (@EmmanuelAcho) August 23, 2020
