When Saints safety Malcolm Jenkins heard Drew Brees conflate kneeling during the national anthem with disrespecting America, he was not happy. But Jenkins believes the fallout from that was productive.
Jenkins said Monday on The Daily Show that he hopes more Americans, black and white alike, will sit down and have honest conversations like he had with Brees.
“I think my interaction with Drew is a microcosm to what we need to do as a country,” Jenkins said, via Nola.com.
Jenkins said he gave Brees an honest account of how he felt when he heard Brees’ comments, and Brees listened thoughtfully. That’s the most important thing all of us can ask of each other.
“We try to move to a post-racial type of society and move on from our past without actually addressing the history and the way that our past pretty much paints the present,” Jenkins said. “And until we change the direction that we’re going, until we change the systems that were put in place in the past, we’ll always be tethered to that. And I think that starts with truth.”
Jenkins, to his credit, gave Brees the truth. And Brees, to his credit, listened.