In an opinion piece published in the International Business Times, Spectator editor Charles Dunst ’18, contended that American sports are indeed politicized. Titled "Colin Kaepernick Makes Us Uncomfortable Because He Disrupts An American Fantasy," the Jan. 10 article focused on former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, his display of protest during the national anthem, and the political reactions his behavior aroused.
Dunst used Hungary as an example when pointing to the fact that, “This awareness of the longstanding and seemingly enshrined nature of sports as deeply political is widely accepted across Europe.” He continued his comparison with the United States: “America has spent over 100 years cultivating a collective, unrealistic utopia in which sports and politics remain fully separated.”
Citing Kaepernick’s statistics, Dunst wrote, “It is clear that the former Super Bowl quarterback’s absence from the NFL is not based in any legitimate statistical analysis. It is demonstrably clear that he is being kept out of the league for his political views and the way in which his symbolic knee manifested such views…. Kaepernick’s politics, while his own, sparked a movement that politicized a team and a league and even eventually caught the attention of the president.”
Dunst concluded with, “It took Kaepernick to expose our sporting culture as not so different from the rest of the world.”
