Former “Duck Dynasty” stars Willie and Korie Robertson recently had a sit-down debate with NFL players about athletes kneeling for the National Anthem on their Facebook Watch series “At Home With the Robertsons.”
Among the crew were former Texans RB Arian Foster, free agent DB Michael Thomas, and Nate Boyer. The discussion was for the couple to try to understand the goal behind players taking a knee when the anthem plays at football games.
As you know, the Anthem protests kicked off in 2016 by Colin Kaepernick, who continues to be criticized for it and hasn’t played a single down of football in the NFL since that season ended.
During the conversation, Korie Robertson wanted to understand the racial aspect of the protest given that they have a Black son.
“The guys made the point that this is not hating America,” she explained in the episode. “This is a specific protest about police brutality and injustice against Black people. Once that came out and that message was kind of understood, people were more accepting of it, where at first it just felt like a total, just like, rejection of America and the values that we hold.”
Willie was not convinced about the appropriateness of protesting at games.
“Personally, I don’t have a problem if someone wants to wear a logo or something,” he said. “It’s when they got to the flag, of choosing that exact time to make your protest, I just felt like the flag should really bring us together… yeah, that just feels a little un-American.”
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He argued that football games in general are a bad time to protest.
“I understand, though, wanting to change for sure,” he said. “It’s just like, is that the best time? You know? The flag and even, for me, football. When I watch football, I don’t want to be thinking about who the president is and what the politics are. I just want to watch either my favorite team or two teams go after it.”
Michael Thomas chimed in to say that he has a responsibility to highlight issues plaguing the Black community.
“Everybody who took a knee, everybody who was fighting for social justice and using their voice and platform,” he explained. “We were just trying to say, ‘Look, if we’re looked at as leaders in our community, and we can talk about, you know, stopping domestic violence; we can talk about, like, you know, raising awareness for cancer, anti-bullying and stuff like that, when it comes to issues in the African American community, why can’t we be the leaders and the champions of that as well? And use our voice and platform and do it?'”
Korie added: “Because it is when people are watching/ If you have a platform and there’s a chance for you to get eyeballs on it, and you have something that’s really important to you, that’s probably a good time to do it.”
What Arian Foster added:
“If you look at the history of this country, it was literally founded on protests, you were literally running from Britain right?” Foster retorted. “You were protesting taxation, this is what this country was founded on was protests. So to say protesting is inappropriate at any time is just to me a lack of understanding of how this country even got started … there’s nothing more fundamentally American than a protest.”
He went on to note that Willie’s feeling of discomfort is normal as “protest is meant to be contentious. You’re always going to have people oppose it or else it’s not going to be a protest.”
“It’s never the right time, and the disconnect between the sides of this country is, there’s people saying, ‘It’s not right, things aren’t right’ and other people saying, ‘but it could be worse,’ and I’m like, ‘Well what are we here for if not to make this place better?’”
“Before the game, the American flag is flying, the national anthem is playing, you’ve got aircraft flying over, you’ve got … the Navy Seals jumping out,” Foster said. “You have what I would label as propaganda for the military and that’s literally the epitome of politics.”
Check out the video below:
