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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.
Eseman-
and @peter_h
I'm sure it's American in this context. I did do a bit of digging when the Kaepernick story came out.
I think what may have confused me is that I half-remember some US war film/TV set in the 1990s (Black Hawk Down? Jarhead? Generation Kill?) and there was a fair amount of taking the knee there while being briefed/resting.
So I was assuming it had come from military to sports, as there is fair amount of military influence in US sports (Veteran guests of hono(u)r, flyovers, etc) but perhaps the influence here is in the other direction.
I probably imagined the religious bit, or at least conflated it with the two-knees position.
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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.
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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...Well, yes, so the one-knee pose does have more supplicatory/belittling context in monarchic societies.
NB I'm not criticising it any way. Just interested in the cultural context/readings.
chez_jay
It annoys me that I'm not sure exactly where taking a/the knee comes from originally. I think it's something to do with one, of all of:
possibly based on:
possibly based on religious supplicatory position?