Epic WTF

I think it's an American Football thing.

When a player is tackled, the play is stopped when his knee touches the ground. Quarterbacks can use this rule in the final play of the half/game - instead of making a play which might result in a turnover, they can simply kneel down to end the play.

It might be US in origin, certainly that’s where I encountered it most often.

I grew up across the pond and played various contact and low-contact sports competitively from grade school to university. When a player was injured badly enough to stop play and potentially be taken off the field, the opposing team would always take a knee while the coaches or medics investigated how bad it was. (one would kneel in cases where it was expected to be bad).

I always understood it as a sign of respect for one’s opponent, as a recognition that it could happen to anyone and it was ultimately a game not worth serious injury (even in full contact sports with scholarships on the line*), and to signal that whatever caused the injury wasn’t in keeping with their team’s ethos or the spirit of the game.

Kaepernick started taking a knee during the US Anthem at NFL games to protest and draw attention to police killings of black Americans. I understood it from the first moment as a respectful sign of protest (vs. sitting down which would be disrespectful) signalling that what was happening was a tragedy that deserved recognition. Not once did I think he was disrespecting the US, the anthem, The Troops (TM), the bald eagle, etc etc.

I also never considered it supplicatory or belittling; that’s two knees. You can stand to fight quickly from one knee, not so from two.

I’ve always suspected the UK establishment uses ‘bending the knee’ as opposed to taking a knee because the former sounds much more like prostrating before royalty, or like a line from Game of Thrones. It irritates me, because it undermines an effort to address and extinguish racism.