Source: Joe Robbins / Getty
It may only be preseason, but the men of the Cleveland Browns are making their beliefs known.
During Monday night’s game against the New York Giants, a dozen Cleveland Brown players took a knee. While the group knelt, several other players stood in solidarity next to them and placed their hands on the shoulders of kneeling teammates.
“There’s a lot of racial and social injustices in the world that are going on right now. We just decided to take a knee and pray for the people who have been affected and just pray for the world in general,” rookie safety Jabrill Peppers said after the Browns’ win over the Giants.
Though most of the players were Black, the first known white player to take a knee was Seth DeValve.
“The United States is the greatest country in the world,” DeValve said during a post game interview. “It is because it provides opportunities to its citizens that no other country does. The issue is that it doesn’t provide equal opportunity to everybody. And I wanted to support my African-American teammates today who wanted to take a knee.”
Beyond that, it goes even deeper for DeValve, who’s got a Black wife.
“I myself will be raising children that don’t look like me, and I want to do my part as well to do everything I can to raise them in a better environment than we have right now,” DeValve said.
A week ago, Justin Britt and Chris Long answered the call for white players to voice their opinions by putting their hand on Michael Bennett’s shoulder as he sat on the bench.
With the 2017-18 NFL season around the corner, it’ll be interesting to see how players respond to the growing National Anthem protests around the league.
