Republicans, Sneakers, Michael Jordan, Colin Kaepernick and the Shifting Role of Politics in Sports

Who can forget when Donald Trump dunked on Colin Kaepernick?

When asked why he wasn’t more overtly political many decades ago, Michael Jordan famously quipped, “Republicans buy sneakers too.” The Hall of Famer claimed that he was kidding but his comment spoke to an unspoken bargain superstar athletes and towering icons of assimilation like Jordan struck with their sometimes Conservative fans. 

These champions of both sports and capitalism implicitly promised not to be too angry, black or political. In return, their racially backwards fans were able to pretend that a hyper-capitalist, aggressively monetized world where rich white billionaires make fortunes off the bodies and talent of young black and brown men in games that begin with mandatory expressions of patriotism in the form of a terrible song written by a proud slave-owner represented a one hundred percent apolitical racial utopia where people put their racial and political differences aside to root, root, root for the home team and black and hispanic athletes made enough money to provide for their grandchildren’s grandchildren. 

Conservative fans were similarly able to delude themselves into thinking that the athletes of color whose jerseys and shoes they bought radiated nothing but love and appreciation for a system that made them rich and famous and powerful. 

Athletes/one-man businesses like Michael Jordan are the winners of capitalism as much as they’re champions of sport. How could they possibly be against a system that made them millionaires and household names? 

Then one preseason game San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to kneel rather than stand during the playing of the National Anthem to protest racism and police brutality. 

That symbolic gesture and the many that would follow, from Kaepernick as well as athletes sympathetic to his cause shattered the agreement Jordan alluded to when he joked that Republicans buy sneakers too. 

To right-wing sports fans, Kaepernick was the evil, race-baiting snake who forever ruined the racial Garden of Eden that is professional sports by not only suggesting, but outright and angrily insisting that sports is an inherently black, political realm and the perfect vehicle to express righteous anger at the injustices and iniquities of racist white America.

Kaepernick kicked off a goddamn revolution in the process. Trump said of Kaepernick and the athletes he inspired, “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn't be playing, you shouldn't be there, maybe you shouldn't be in the country.”

At a rally, meanwhile, Trump tossed red meat to his fanbase by musing out loud, "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He is fired.”

It seems safe to assume that Trump’s followers WOULD love to see an NFL owner angrily fire one of the son of a bitches that work for him specifically for exercising their first amendment right to free speech with a silent protest of police brutality. 

This is particularly true since Trump himself floated it as a Conservative sports fan’s racially-loaded power fantasy and he has an influence on his die-hard followers roughly akin to the hold Charles Manson had on his “girls.” 

Alas, the NFL has made it impossible to fire Kaepernick because no team will hire him in the first place. The countercultural icon may be one of the most famous, important and talked about athletes in the world but he has not played in the NFL since 2016. He truly puts the “free” in free agent. 

Kaepernick chose to ignore Jordan’s wise, cynical, deeply pragmatic words about Republicans buying sneakers to his profound detriment as an NFL player. His stance got him blackballed from the league but he found a lucrative alternate revenue stream selling sneakers to non-Republicans when he became a high-profile, controversial spokesman for Nike, the sneaker company synonymous with Michael Jordan and his extraordinary success as a businessman and mogul. 

Of course the leader of the free world had to once again give his opinion on the unemployed athlete’s career, sneering of Nike decisions to prominently feature Kaepernick in its ads, “I think it’s a terrible message that they’re sending and the purpose of them doing it, maybe there’s a reason for them doing it. But I think as far as sending a message, I think it’s a terrible message and a message that shouldn’t be sent. There’s no reason for it.” 

Of course the stated message behind amplifying Kaepernick’s voice and protest is to shine a light on police brutality, an issue even NFL commissioner Roger Godell concedes deserves to be talked about and addressed in ways that Kaepernick’s kneeling highlighted, so of course Trump is going to see that as a terrible message that should not be disseminated. 

You can’t be apolitical in Donald Trump’s America. To attempt to do so when you have money and power and a platform is both impossible and amoral. 

In a post-Kaepernick world it’s impossible to hold onto the flattering fiction that athletes of color are apolitical, endlessly grateful paragons of patriotism who bleed red, white and blue and experience nothing but love and blind loyalty when they look at the flag or hear that horrible, horrible anthem of ours performed at the beginning of each game. 

That’s how it should be. Republicans may buy sneakers but that doesn’t mean they should be let off the hook for the fairly central role they play in perpetuating an amoral system built on a foundation of white supremacy. 

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