Dressing Like A Kneeling Football Player Is A Terrible Idea, Just So We're Clear
If you're headed into the last weekend of October and you don't already have a Halloween costume, that likely means one thing: you're scrambling. That in turn means that you'll either resort to a cheap option — pick a mask, any mask — or you'll try to get cute and try out an easy costume that alludes to current events. If the latter for you involves dressing up like a kneeling football player, there's some advice you should consider: Chill out.
To put it simply: Trying out a protesting-athlete look, which is essentially trying out a protesting-black-athlete look, is really terrible idea, not least because of the logistics.
Just think this through.
Literally no one at your Halloween party will know what you're getting at, unless you plan to kneel while in San Francisco 49ers jersey... the whole time.
Otherwise, you'll just look like you're dressed up as any other football player. That is, unless you plan to do something to really sell the costume, something like a fake afro, a black glove, or the somehow-never-dying trend of putting on blackface.
In that case, you'd really, really be trying to execute a terrible idea.
To be clear, it doesn't matter who would be trying to pull off the costume either — black, white, whatever. Just consider what happened when Jason Whitlock, a black journalist, had actor Christopher Reid (of Kid 'n Play fame) on set with him at Fox Sports pretend to be Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback who practically started the kneeling movement.
You think people were ready to give Whitlock a pass, even after he said the impersonator wasn't white? No, of course not.
Whitlock's photo even had a coworker, former NFL player Shannon Sharpe, ready to lose it. And Fox Sports eventually decided not to air the segment that would've featured the Kaepernick impersonation on TV. That's probably because they realized along the way what should be obvious to you by now: Kneeling football players as a costume option is a terrible idea.
The players who are kneeling during the national anthem are doing it for reasons they are dead serious about.
Just watch Miami Dolphins safety Michael Thomas about the reason why he kneels.
As a man, a father, as an African-American man, as somebody in the NFL, as one of those son of bitches, yeah I took it personally. But at the same time, like I said in my Twitter post, it’s bigger than me.
The 28-year-old player later added,
I've got a daughter, and she's going to have to live in this world. And I'm going to do whatever I got to do to make sure that she can look at her dad and be like 'Hey, you did something. You tried to make a change.'
Now, you might not share the emotion that this particular player had over the subject — which ultimately isn't that big of a deal, by the way, everyone gets emotional about their cause of choice.
Still, you could at least come to the conclusion that of all the themes you want to pull of while you're having fun, it might be best to avoid something that really isn't fun.
Depending on the crowd you're around while celebrating Halloween, there's also the prospect of you taking the risk of looking like an assh*le for a costume that isn't even all that ambitious or creative in the first place.
It's all fine and dandy trying that stunt around people who hate the protests, but not everyone thinks as negatively about them.
Ultimately, dressing like a protesting football player is pretty lame and just not worth the risk, and that's even before considering how offensive it can be.
