Program ‘What Would You Do?’ looks at anthem kneeling
Friday’s episode of the ABC News program “What Would You Do?” addresses kneeling during the national anthem, the movement begun by Turlock son and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
The hidden-camera program, hosted by John Quiñones, shows how people react to thought-provoking scenarios created by actors.
A news release by ABC describes one of Friday’s segments: “In a diner, a young black football player tells his coach he wants to take a knee during the national anthem at the first game of the season. The coach is very stern and tells the young man that he must stand or he will be kicked off the team. The athlete tries to explain that he isn’t disrespecting the flag or the military, but instead is voicing his disapproval of police brutality. The scenario is repeated with a white football player. The same scenario was filmed in two different places: Bardstown, Kentucky and Bronx, New York. How will others react?”
A sneak-peek video of the segment shows some reactions to both staged scenes. When the white “coach” tells the black youth he’ll be cut from the team if he kneels, a young black woman who overhears from a nearby table says, “You’re not thinking about his perspective as a young black student. Young black males are under attack right now. It is an amazing thing that he’s fearless enough to say he has an opinion.”
Another woman at the table tells the actor playing the coach, “Maybe you should kneel with him because at the end of the day, we might need you, we might need someone like you to kneel with him.”
In the second staging, the white “coach” tells his white team captain that the protest doesn’t even involve him because he’s white. He likens kneeling to stomping on the flag. The teen says he wants to kneel to show solidarity with black youth.
A white male sitting nearby adds his opinion. “I was military, that does offend me big time,” he says. He calls kneeling during “The Star-Spangled Banner” super-disrespectful “to everybody who has fought for your freedom to be able to do that.”
He urges the student to think long and hard about his decision and not kneel just “because everybody else is.”