San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick protesting racial inequality by sitting through the national anthem reminded me instantly of a different athlete using similar tactics.
In July 2004, I had highlighted a sitdown by Carlos Delgado of the Toronto Blue Jays during seventh-inning-stretch renditions of “God Bless America” at ballparks nationwide to protest the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Both are rare instances of athletes risking legacies and future earnings for causes far deeper than sneaker sales.
Though Kaepernick has caused the bigger firestorm, given how Twitter and Facebook today can instantly publicize issues, both athletes dealt with accusations that they had betrayed the nation, its flag and the armed forces. A dozen years after Delgado’s sitdown, the Kaepernick stance again is testing our country’s willingness to confront criticism from within, especially involving patriotic symbols.
It’s therefore worth remembering Delgado’s protest.
Hindsight shows us some of Delgado’s views about the years-long Iraq conflict later became more widely accepted as accurate. As such, his tale offers a warning about the dangers of judging Kaepernick too quickly.
Kaepernick’s controversy has inflamed patriotic passions ahead of this weekend’s 15th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks.
For Delgado, the patriotic backlash flared up less than three years after 9/11. The story of his sitdown broke as he was in his native Puerto Rico with the Blue Jays on July 4 weekend to play a neutral-site series against the Montreal Expos.
Delgado had helped fund activists on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques who had successfully campaigned to have a U.S. Navy base there removed the previous year. The Navy had done test bombing for decades on Vieques, including uranium-depleted shells used in the 16-month-old Iraq conflict.
Vieques residents had long claimed the test munitions caused higher-than-usual rates of cancer and other illnesses on the island.
I had written in 2001 about Delgado’s work in Vieques and wanted to know his 2004 feelings about the Navy’s pullout. That’s when he told me about his protest silently waged for over a year.
“I never stay outside for ‘God Bless America,’ ” Delgado said. “I actually don’t think people have noticed it. I don’t (stand) because I don’t believe it’s right. I don’t believe in the war.’’
Delgado added: “It’s a very terrible thing that happened on Sept. 11. It’s also a terrible thing that happened in Afghanistan and Iraq. I just feel so sad for the families that lost relatives and loved ones in the war.
“But I think it’s the stupidest war ever,’’ he said. “Who are you fighting against? You’re just getting ambushed now. We have more people dead now, after the (official) war, than during the war. You’ve been looking for weapons of mass destruction. Where are they at? You’ve been looking for over a year. Can’t find them. I don’t support that.’’
Delgado made clear the roots of his opposition lay in the Vieques testing.
Unlike Kaepernick, Delgado’s protest lacked social media to ignite it, though select U.S. media did follow-ups. It wasn’t until William C. Rhoden wrote a New York Times column about it two weeks later, ahead of a Blue Jays series at Yankee Stadium, that Delgado’s stance went mainstream.
Delgado was roundly booed that series and at other ballparks in ensuing months.
Big Apple fans wouldn’t leave Delgado alone until two years later, when he joined the New York Mets. At the team’s request, Delgado discontinued his protest — saying he had achieved desired awareness.
Delgado’s sitdowns occurred when U.S. patriotism was still at a post-9/11 extreme. The country band Dixie Chicks seriously damaged their career in 2003 by making anti-war comments and criticizing President George W. Bush.
Delgado was taking a risk in 2004, given his pending free agency that winter. But he shrugged that off.
“We’re not doing anything wrong,’’ he told me. “Sometimes … you’ve got to push it a little bit, or else you can’t get anything done.’’
It’s easy to criticize athletes pushing social change as ungrateful millionaires. But Delgado’s statements about Iraq — especially the WMD premise and the conflict’s drawn-out nature — today are more widely accepted.
That’s best remembered when considering Kaepernick, whose views about racial injustice already are shared by vast swaths of this country’s population. A dozen years from now, it’s possible that discussions fueled by Kaepernick’s protest will have us all saying how right he was.
And even if Kaepernick’s views are never more widely shared, that doesn’t make him anti-American. This nation was founded by protest, not citizens sitting on hands when perceived injustice occurs.
Kaepernick and Delgado weren’t insulting the flag and soldiers overseas. They honored both by defending American ideals that troops supposedly fight for.
The insult would be scrapping hard-won ideals by using the flag as a shield to avoid heated issues such as war and racism on the homefront.
It’s the oppressive regimes typically wrapping themselves in flags, preying on minorities and sending soldiers off to die for causes that can’t be questioned. As for democracies, they largely are measured by whether they treat everybody equally.
Sure, our freedoms include the right to disagree with Kaepernick or Delgado. But using our free speech to brand them “traitors” and bully them into silence doesn’t further democracy.
When athletes risk money and legacies to say something is wrong, we owe it to ourselves to address their claims without tearing the individual apart. This nation’s gradually accepted views on much of what Delgado said about Iraq should teach us that.
Because if Kaepernick has it “wrong” about racial injustice, life in America will go on. But if it takes another decade-plus of flag angst before figuring out Kaepernick was “right” all along, that type of unchecked societal damage is much tougher to undo.