Whatever goodwill Drew Brees thought he had earned by tweeting out the #BlackOutTuesday hashtag was quickly lost Wednesday when Yahoo Finance released a clip of his interview with Daniel Roberts, during which the New Orleans Saints quarterback said he “will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.”
Before saying that, Brees explained what the flag and anthem represented to him personally. If you were expecting the NFL’s career leader in touchdown passes to then say he understands that those symbols may represent something else for people who have had very different experiences in this country, well, that didn’t happen…
Highlight: @readdanwrite asks @drewbrees what the star NFL quarterback thinks about "players kneeling again when the NFL season starts."@drewbrees: “I will never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag of the United States of America or our country.”
Full exchange: pic.twitter.com/MpCkFyOMed
— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) June 3, 2020
Not long after that clip started making the rounds on Twitter, Saints receiver Michael Thomas fired off two tweets that seemed to be aimed at his quarterback.
He don’t know no better.
— Michael Thomas (@Cantguardmike) June 3, 2020
We don’t care if you don’t agree and whoever else how about that.
— Michael Thomas (@Cantguardmike) June 3, 2020
“He don’t know no better” seems to let Brees off the hook, but I don’t know if that was necessarily Thomas’ aim. After all, Brees is a 41-year-old man who has spent more than half of his life in predominantly black locker rooms. That Brees doesn’t know any better is major problem and an indictment on his ability to evolve as a person.
His suggestion that anyone who kneels is disrespecting the flag or the country is also majorly problematic, as it misrepresents the message players who protested, like Colin Kaepernick or former teammates Kenny Stills and Kenny Vacarro, were trying to send. That is, police brutality is wrong and the racism that allows it to happen is engrained in the fabric of the country that flag and anthem represent.
Brees can hold his own opinions. There’s nothing wrong with him wanting to celebrate a country that has been so good to him throughout his life. But to not acknowledge that same country hasn’t been so good to his black peers is shameful at best.