Taking the knee

[1][2] The gesture originated in a 2016 American football game, during which Colin Kaepernick and his 49ers teammate Eric Reid chose to kneel during the playing of the US national anthem, to call attention to the issues of racial inequality and police brutality.

[3] Reid said of the decision: After hours of careful consideration, and even a visit from Nate Boyer, a retired Green Beret and former NFL player, we came to the conclusion that we should kneel, rather than sit, the next day during the anthem as a peaceful protest.

[4] Taking a knee became more frequent after then-President Trump criticized the gesture during a rally in September 2017, describing it as a disrespectful act against the United States national anthem and flag, and urging NFL team owners to sack "son of a bitch" players who performed it.

[5][6][7] In a June 2020 radio interview, United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that he saw the gesture as "a symbol of subjugation and subordination, rather than one of liberation and emancipation", adding that he was unaware whether it had a broader history and that it seemed to him to be "taken from the Game of Thrones".

[20][21][22][23] Conservative MP Lee Anderson stated that he would not watch England games in the tournament as a direct result of this political gesture, saying he believed that "the vast majority of these fans booing last night are not racist" and thought they were "more likely to [...] not share the Marxist views of BLM".

[28] In July 2021, Conservative MP Steve Baker said the Government should start backing players taking the knee,[29] after Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel had declined to condemn those who booed.

[41] In 1962, American photographer Danny Lyon took a picture in Cairo, Illinois, showing three demonstrators on bended knee praying in front of the city's racially segregated swimming pool.