Colin Kaepernick’s protest began silently in 2016 and went largely unnoticed. In fact, it wasn’t until a post-game interview when a news outlet asked him why he didn’t stand during the national anthem that everyone became aware he was even protesting. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

To be honest, I didn’t have much of a reaction to Kaepernick when I first heard his statement beyond thinking, “Good for him.” It was only in retrospect that I understood how his choice of protest was like shooting an arrow into the American consciousness and hitting the bullseye. The National Football League is, after all, arguably the closest thing the United States has to a state-sponsored religion. Worship services take place all over the nation with at least three live broadcasts on major networks every Sunday. The pre-game national anthem has become a religious ceremony unto itself, with the US military paying advertising dollars to the NFL in efforts to recruit soldiers via highly coordinated displays of a certain kind of patriotism. NFL games reflect the mythos of American meritocracy: a racially diverse group of players on a level playing field battling it out until the best one wins. By taking a knee, Kaepernick disrupted this narrative, forcing the audience into awareness that many of the players were Black and that the playing field in which they lived was not, in fact, a level one.

Like many Black Americans who have protested racism in America, Kaepernick has suffered serious consequences for speaking up. Rosa Parks was fired from her job as a seamstress after refusing to stand and give her bus seat to a white man, and Kaepernick, after refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest of racism, has been blackballed by the NFL. If the NFL’s hope was that the matter would fade quietly after Kaepernick was pushed out of the league, that has decidedly backfired. Protests have grown exponentially to include not only the issue of police brutality, but the NFL’s infringement upon Kaepernick’s right to protest according to his political beliefs. Through it all, Kaepernick has remained mostly silent, seemingly focused primarily on putting his money where his politics are, donating $1 million to various poverty relief efforts.

Trump has insisted the central issue isn’t race as he seeks to reframe the protests to be an issue of patriotism and showing proper respect for the flag. However, he’s now used harsher language in speaking of Black athletes protesting racism than he’s used in speaking of the white supremacist who murdered Heather Heyer in Charlottesville. Given that Trump referred to former POW John McCain as being a loser for getting captured in Vietnam and attacked the Muslim family of a slain U.S. soldier, no serious minded person can believe that his recent targeting of the NFL—a sport where roughly two-thirds of the players are Black—is about patriotism and not racism. The fact that the majority of players protesting have been Black, and that Trump used racially loaded language in referring to them, only makes it clearer.

Like many others, I took to Twitter this weekend to continually drive this point home: that while Trump claims to be defending the honor of the U.S. flag, he’s really just continuing his agenda of white nationalism and voicing opposition to those who protest racism and police brutality, both things he has openly advocated.

Yet, while they may bristle at Trump’s comments, many in the NFL seem more comfortable with Trump being made the central issue instead of racism. Several teams chose to link arms during Sunday’s pregame shows in what they described as displays of unity in the face of Trump’s divisive statements. Though Kaepernick’s protest began over an issue he deemed “bigger than football,” by Monday, discussion had shifted from Kaepernick being sidelined for protesting police brutality to the feud that now existed between the President of the United States and the owners of the NFL.

That issue, it appears, is more comfortable for both the NFL and mainstream media outlets to digest than the core issue of America’s problem with racism. It’s more comfortable to discuss how protests of police brutality impact ratings and profits for the NFL than to discuss the topic of police brutality itself. It’s easier to talk about whether players should kneel or stand during the anthem than to talk about Seattle Seahawks’ player Michael Bennett being racially profiled and held at gunpoint by Las Vegas police. But regardless of where our comfort lies, the core issue remains unchanged. It was the same issue when Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing titles for protesting racism and war in 1966 and when white baseball players threatened to strike as Jackie Robinson integrated major league baseball in 1947.

The issue is racism. And until this nation address that issue in earnest, until the NFL and every major American institution addresses how racism manifests in its day-to-day operations, there is no amount of deflection or superficial displays of unity that will resolve it. The protest that Kaepernick began by himself in silence has now grown to a deafening roar with thousands joining him in solidarity. The issue of racism cannot be silenced, it can only be ignored—at the nation’s peril.

Bree Newsome is an artist who drew national attention in 2015 when she climbed the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Capitol building and lowered the confederate battle flag following the murder of nine black parishioners by a white supremacist at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston.

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