National Anthem Protests Pt.1 w/ Roger Goodell | Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man Ep 8

[Music] welcome to another episode of uncomfortable conversations with a black man just a few years ago the injustices in our world were brought to the forefront of our eyes by athletes across major sports well no sport bigger than the nfl which has been set to own one day of the week i'm joined now by commissioner of the nfl roger goodell how are you my friend i'm great emmanuel how you doing i'm doing great i'm glad to be here good to see you um you're one of the busiest man in america uh you could be anywhere but you know the nature of these conversations and have chosen to be here why well i've seen a few of your past episodes and i'm a big believer in dialogue and and frankly i talk to my kids all the time and others about you really don't learn until you're uncomfortable and and really when you get uncomfortable it forces you to resort to something you're not comfortable with right and it gives you an opportunity to learn so i always look at things as an experience to learn um i think i teased you you're probably gonna have a hard time making me uncomfortable which is a challenge and i probably shouldn't have said it because i'm very comfortable talking about race yeah i have all my life you told me when we spoke on the phone you said emanuel i remember in elementary school kids were being bussed into my school take me back there elaborate on that well i'm embarrassed to say i grew up in the 60s so that's how old i am i mean it's like you can't relate to that one but um i went to public school in washington dc right in the city my dad was in politics so we lived there from uh 59 right after i was born until 1970. but the 60s were a really volatile time yeah you know we had not only civil rights but we had um you know vietnam war was a terribly divisive issue too and so being in washington i you know it wasn't unusual for me to walk home and the national guard was on the on the street corner uh and i really didn't think much about it again i was doing my research and i came across this picture who who who are those two people in the center of that photo right there well i can tell you all three of them so this is coretta scotts scott key uh george mcgovern okay and that is my father and what's going on there they are marching um in the uh vietnam war rally um and the interesting story about that is uh credit scott king she didn't want to march without my father please elaborate on it she actually um this is how it was told to me and as i understand it um she said i want charlie get out but walk with me because he stood up to the vietnam war obviously i look at that and i have a tremendous pride we actually have that in our family house on the wall when you walk in my dad actually when he spoke up against the vietnam war you know he originally supported the vietnam war as a politician he changed his mind actually by going to various colleges around the state of new york which he represented and he listened to the kids yeah and he listened to the students who were being drafted by the way and going off to this tragic war and so he was really influenced by that and said he came back and he set us all down as a family and said i made a decision that i'm going to oppose the vietnam war it will not be popular with the president of the united states richard nixon and uh and i will likely not win my re-election for the senate but it's the right thing to do and so he turned out to be right on the fact he wouldn't win re-election because the president and the vice president just ripped him and just you know he didn't have a chance and you know but he he stood up for what he believes it's not always easy to know what's right but you have to when you do know what's right you have to have the courage to do it what do you know now in 2020 what does roger goodell know now about the protest that took place during the national anthem the peaceful protest that you wish you knew back then just what was going on in the communities i i didn't know what was going on in the communities and when i had the chance to sit with our players i never had the chance to sit with cap but i saw talked with kenny stills a lot eric reed malcolm jameson jenkins anquan bolton so many other players that you know some of them sacrificed a great deal you can't understate how valuable the message that you put out a couple months was at least as a former player as a black man in society that message resonated with me it spoke to me you said you listened you heard you learned you even apologized to so many but in the midst of all that there wasn't a specific message or apology to the catalyst for it all kaepernick who you mentioned if you were to publicly express your remorse apologize to kaepernick what would you say well the first thing i'd say is i wish we had listened earlier uh cap to what you were kneeling about and what you were trying to bring attention to uh we had invited him in several times to have the conversation have the dialogue i wish we had the benefit of that yeah we never did um and you know we would have benefited from that yeah absolutely sometimes because i've known for years now that the the peaceful protest during the national anthem it was never about the flag to the point where i just want to rip out my hair sometimes and say it's not about the flag right if you were to be able to relay that message what would you say like to people who still think it's about the flag what would you tell them it is not about the flag the message here that what our players are doing is being mischaracterized these these are not people who are unpatriotic yeah they're not disloyal they're not against our military yeah in fact many of those guys were in the military yeah and they are military family what they were trying to do is exercise their right to bring attention to something that needs to get fixed and that that that misrepresentation of who they were and what they were doing was the thing that really nodded me our nation has gone through an incredibly uh tumultuous just to a degree trying and depressing time for a lot of people especially after seeing and witnessing the murder of george floyd on camera what was the most valuable lesson you learned about yourself in these last four or five months specifically after witnessing that along with so many other injustices well you know it was horrific to see that play out on the screen um there was a part of me that said i hope people realize that's what the players were we're protesting and that's what's been going on in our communities you see it now on television but that's been going on for a long long time and that's where we should have listened sooner yeah and we should have been in there with them understanding it and figuring out what we can do as the nfl we can't solve all problems and we can't yeah but we're big in our communities we have a platform we have an opportunity and we're using that effectively now i wish we could have been doing it earlier what was the moment because i've had my own what was the moment when you realized wait a second that's why players are protesting was there a specific incident was there a specific tragedy where you roger goodell said that's it i get it now well i would say this when i listened to them i heard it and i'll try to make that decision i heard it and i believed it but when you go and you sit in one of those bail hearings or you go on the ride-along and you see people who are met you go talk to a parent who's lost their child because of police brutality it's better than hearing you feel it you know it and you see it and that when that happens did it change it's really powerful it helped me understand better and you know people can hear it but they're not connected to it i never experienced it i never experienced domestic violence in my life but when i when i went to call centers and i listened to victims and heard what they were saying and what they were going through and you could hear the fear in their voice yeah it changes you yeah you you feel that deeply [Music] there's nothing more peaceful than bowing one's head and taking a knee we've seen other sports now do it will you support players if they were to peacefully protest during the national anthem this [Music] season you

Channel: Emmanuel Acho

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Keywords: emmanuel acho, uncomfortable conversation, uncomfortable conversations, racism, uncomfortable convo with a black man, acho uncomfortable convo, uncomfortable conversation with a black man, uncomfortable conversations with a black man, conversations with a black man, acho, roger goodell, nfl, kaepernick, kneeling, collin kaepernick, nfl commissioner, national anthem protest, taking a knee, kaep, nfl protest, black lives matter, blm

Id: ljgkEcc4B1k

Length: 9min 9sec (549 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 23 2020