Malcolm Jenkins, the Philadelphia Eagles safety and face of the Players Coalition, said this week that he would end his practice of raising his right fist during the playing of the star-spangled banner, after the NFL agreed to provide $89m to programs promoting the goals the coalition wants to achieve.

While there is so much to write about the details surrounding the deal struck between the Players Coalition and the NFL, I want to focus on Malcolm Jenkins and why I agree with his abandonment of raising his fist during the playing of the national anthem. To do so I’m going to, as he posted on Twitter, go back to “where we began” for him (and the Players Coalition) – his ride along with the Philadelphia police department.

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While combing over the comments made by Jenkins in the article attached to his 30 November tweet, where he reminded followers about his entry point into fighting for social justice, Jenkins admits that “luckily” he had “very, very few interactions with officers” in his life.

This is an anomaly in the lives of many black people in America, and specifically in Philadelphia.

A recent study shows us that predominately black neighborhoods in Philadelphia drew 70% more frisks than non-black areas, yet yielded less contraband, and that the elevated rate of frisking was consistent regardless of whether the majority black neighborhood was a high-crime area or a very low-crime area.

Jenkins said: “There’s tons of people outside, but nobody wants to get involved. They don’t feel like the police are there to protect them, so they don’t give information. The officers are mad because they’re trying to clean up the streets … but there’s no cooperation. It was an eye-opening experience”.

Maybe, “the people” disproportionately policed in Philadelphia don’t feel like the officers are there to better their communities, not only because of rampant racially biased stop-and-frisk tactics.

Maybe many of those residents remember 13 May 1985, when the police dropped a bomb in a west Philadelphia neighborhood, leaving residents like Steve Harmon retelling the terror saying: “Drop a bomb on a residential area? I never in my life heard of that. It’s like Vietnam”.



No. It was not Vietnam. It was a black neighborhood in America. The bombs were dropped on the black liberation group Move, and any other non-Move affiliated children, women and men in the vicinity.



Move members were often photographed raising their black fist.

Conceivably, Jenkins was unaware of the historical significance of raising the black fist as a symbol of resistance, strength and solidarity in the face of oppression.

Jenkins rode with the police, partnered with wealthy billionaires, and is working with Congress – those are not black-fist raising actions

While raising a black fist will always be connected to the iconic image of athlete-activists Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics, it will also always be associated with the Black Panther party for self-defense (BPP) – a group that was seen by J Edgar Hoover as “without question … the greatest threat to internal security of the country” for providing impoverished youths with hot meals via their Free Children’s Breakfast Program.

We are also talking about the same Black Panther party that was known for exercising their second amendment rights, and taking up arms in defense against police brutality, as they would regularly show up during police encounters with members of the black community, stand at a legal distance, and surveil their interactions to ensure that nothing illegal would take place.

The Black Panthers (and others raising their black fist as a political symbol) did not do ride-alongs with the police – they policed the police, or rode in police cars involuntarily, because they were arrested.

I did not write this piece to frame Jenkins as “sell-out”. No, on the contrary, I thank him for no longer raising his fist as a sign of protest. The historical associations of that gesture with regards to black protest are not reflective of the politics he has displayed.

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Because as Malcolm Jenkins has made apparent, his most “eye opening experiences” during the past two years have been participating in a ride along with the police, meeting with members of Congress in Washington DC and most recently striking an $89m partnering with the NFL owners.

I am not passing judgment, but clearly these moves are in no way aligned with individuals and groups like the Black Panther party, which argued that the economic and political roots of racism were tethered to (what they believed was) the exploitative nature of capitalist systems, and that the black struggle for liberation must be a revolutionary movement to overthrow the entire power structure in order to secure true freedom.

Jenkins rode with the police, partnered with wealthy billionaire, capitalist NFL owners, and is working with Congress – those are not black-fist raising actions. That’s why I am pleased to see Jenkins no longer raising his fist.