49ers Colin Kaepernick’s protested at an exhibition game on August 27th against Green Bay Packers in San Diego just before the new NFL season by refusing to stand for the national anthem.

He kneeled in protest to police shootings and brutality towards minorities in America. “The list goes on and on and on,” Kaepernick said. “At what point do we do something about it? At what point do we take a stand and as a people say this isn’t right?”

Kaepernick has influenced many citizens, celebrities and athletes as well as veterans and leaders in our country, including President Obama, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Trey Songz, and J. Cole. Kaepernick even has high schools following his protests and mimicking the action.

But has this changed anything? Does a protest like this actually work? Depends on your definition of change. In our world, change means drastic and immediate. That’s not realistic when we’re also dealing with laws, courts, trainings and perceptions. These things take time, but there is an end time. How long do we have to wait for the right treatment of all people?

I think this sports protest is the right action. I think we need to tap everyone on the shoulder and keep reminding them, no matter how much they want escape…that we haven’t as Americans, earned that escape yet especially since not everyone can join us.

Kaepernick doesn’t want to continue sitting for the anthem, “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 after the game. “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 [are] getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Dylan Gwinn wrote an editorial about the ideal and the reality behind such an action of protest on Oct. 25.

Gwinn commented on a new consequence to the kneeling protests, and how Kaepernick doesn’t seem to understand why football ratings are going down.

Gwinn makes the connection that it is because of the protests and not because people are uncomfortable with watching players’ brains get brain damage, according to a March 15, 2016 admitting by the NFL Executives.

Gwinn writes, “Kaepernick fails to understand why his protests would hurt NFL viewership: ‘I don’t know much about ratings and how they are affected and all of those things. But I don’t understand why ratings would go down, fighting for justice for people, to try to stop oppression, especially in a league that is predominantly black.’”

Kaepernick’s focus represents what America stands for in theory and in accordance with laws. However, Gwinn continues, “While African Americans comprise a huge portion of the NFL, the league’s viewing audience exhibits more diversity…normal people just want to escape their everyday life…and not confront the decay of Western society.”

I do not appreciate the subtle threat suggesting that the protest is creating a decrease in finances or ratings and that this kind of behavior should stop as a result. As if money matters in the face of equality and lives. I would also ike to think that we know, on any level we exist on, racism and oppression exists.

The idea of “I just want to watch a football game” is an offensive argument to everyone. It suggests we cannot always be thinking about something as serious as racism. Besides, who can escape into a place where there is no racism? Who can escape by turning their tv off? Only those living outside reality because the rest of us have to live it with no channel changer.

America has room for protests. As painful as it might be for some, the protesting the anthem is legal. Kaepernick is refusing to allow the flag to represent racism. In a sense, it is in respect to the flag that he does not stand during the national anthem. He is holding everyone to a higher standard: the revered standard of the Constitution.

For him and for many, a flag representing racism and police brutality is not the flag Americans have lived and died for. Our country means the words in the Constitution in addition to the heart and soul and sacrifice behind those words.

We can not adhere to a one-size-fits-all Americanism, when that one size is too small for everyone to fit.