I had some problems with the practice of kneeling at football games on multiple levels.

1. Its originator is a philosophical and political ignoramus.
2. Separated from its origins, it is a symbol of an extreme ideological movement which at its core is Marxist, wishing to see the destruction of capitalism and, apparently, the nuclear family. The lie that police are targeting “black” people is at the heart of this movement. The stats do not bear this out - they refute it.
3. We can pretend for a moment that it was true, imagining that a part of police training was the learning to hate people with particular skin colours. It does not justify the import of this US movement into the UK. What fractional sense it makes in America is lost when transferred to England. Police don’t even carry guns here. If sports is going to begin involving itself in international political affairs, I have a long list. Uyghur genocide is near the top of it, and the marginal racism in the US doesn’t even make the top 100.

However, I now see that most people see kneeling as a middle finger to the minority of racists that do exist. As a simple way to stand against an insidious ideology, I can’t maintain my frustration with it based on its roots.