【#DoYouThinkIAmSexy? (2022) Full Pinoy Movie】

If it's true that sports can #DoYouThinkIAmSexy? (2022) Full Pinoy Moviebe a powerful lens through which to view bigger issues in American society, many recent events have come with a disturbing -- yet seldom acknowledged -- visual subtext.

That subtext: When the professional sports stage is leveraged to spotlight the continuing systemic mistreatment of many black people in America, it's black athletes who protest. Prominent white athletes, meanwhile, stay on the sidelines.

SEE ALSO: If you're outraged about Brock Turner, you need to learn about Brian Banks

Recent examples aren't hard to find. When LeBron James and other NBA stars wore shirts reading "I Can't Breathe" in honor of Eric Garner and other black men killed by police, none of the league's more well-known white players followed suit. The same goes for when Black Lives Matter protests continued to spread through the sports world shortly thereafter.

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And the same goes for our current controversy, in which two other black NFL players joined San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick by kneeling in protest during the pre-game national anthem.

Much as was the case with the Black Lives Matter and "I Can't Breathe" protests, prominent white people in sports have spoken in Kaepernick's defense. But that's as far as they've gone. They've said they agree with his message but not his method. They've said it's a free country and Kaepernick is exercising his rights.

But none of those white athletes and coaches have truly stepped up to support Kaepernick and other black peers in full -- until Megan Rapinoe on Sunday.

'Important to have white people stand in support'

Seen this? Soccer star Megan Rapinoe takes a knee during national anthem. https://t.co/s9PXCtkal7 Pic: @JessicaDolan pic.twitter.com/muGy1ep1ph

— Veronica Miracle (@VeronicaABC30) September 5, 2016

Rapinoe, a star on the powerhouse U.S. women's soccer team, took a knee during the national anthem before a Sunday National Women's Soccer League match between her Seattle Reign and the Chicago Red Stars. Afterwards, she was direct in explaining what went into the decision.

"Being a gay American, I know what it means to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties," she told American Soccer Now. "It was something small that I could do and something that I plan to keep doing in the future and hopefully spark some meaningful conversation around it."

"It’s important to have white people stand in support of people of color on this. We don’t need to be the leading voice, of course, but standing in support of them is something that’s really powerful."

SEE ALSO: Colin Kaepernick's unlikely journey from rising NFL star to activist athlete

Rapinoe told ESPN's Julie Foudy more about what she sees as "overtly racist" backlash against Kaepernick.

Rapinoe to me on taking a knee for anthem: I'm disgusted w way Colin has been treated & the fans & hatred he has received in all of this.

— Julie Foudy (@JulieFoudy) September 5, 2016

Rapinoe: It is overtly racist. Stay in ur place black man. Just didn’t feel right to me. And quite honestly being gay, I have stood with...

— Julie Foudy (@JulieFoudy) September 5, 2016

Rapinoe: my hand over my heart during the national anthem & felt like I haven’t had my liberties protected, so I can absolutely sympathize..

— Julie Foudy (@JulieFoudy) September 5, 2016

Dave Zirin of the The Nationis among those who picked up Rapinoe's post-protest comments. He's been sounding this call longer than most.

"Rapinoe’s action raises an implicit challenge for those white athletes who are supporting Kaepernick to show their solidarity more publicly," Zirin wrote Tuesday.

Meanwhile, tensions continue to rise between Kaepernick's critics and supporters.

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Drew Brees and a rebuttal penned by MLK 50 years ago

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Many fans have ripped Kaepernick's pregame protests, but his jersey has also ascended to become the hottest seller on NFL.com since they began. Last Friday, a police union threatened to stop working San Francisco 49ers home games unless the team releases or muzzles Kaepernick.

Given the passions incited both for and against Kaepernick, it's perhaps understandable on a certain level why a popular white athlete such as New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees would respond the way he did -- which is to say, not the way Rapinoe responded.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"I agree with his protest, I DON'T agree [with] his METHOD," Brees tweeted of Kaepernick last week.

As was subsequently pointed out by AlterNetwriter Adam Johnson, that line of thinking espoused by Brees is almost exactly what Martin Luther King, Jr. flatly rejected in his famous "Letter from a Birmingham jail," which the civil rights leader penned in 1963.

Here's the relevant passage, which is almost surreal in its relevance more than half a century later.

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

Make no mistake: More than 50 years after King wrote that letter, the stakes are still high. Kaepernick knows this. Rapinoe, too.

The police killings of young men such as Michael Brown and Tamir Rice provide painful evidence, but examples abound even within the sports world.

'I was a big black teenager and no jury would believe anything I said'

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Former Stanford swimmer Brock Turner was released last week after serving three months of a six-month sentence following three felony sexual assault convictions stemming from a late-night incident in which fellow students caught Turner on top of a young woman on the ground near a campus dumpster.

Turner became a symbol of the privilege afforded many young white men when he avoided what could have been a sentence of several years after his dad wrote a pleading letter to a sympathetic judge.

"The sad part about this is Brock was sentenced based on his lifestyle, based on his upbringing," a former football player named Brian Banks said on CNN this summer.

Banks would know. He was once a highly touted high school linebacker who perhaps had an NFL future ahead of him before meeting the American justice system.

A high school classmate accused Banks of rape in 2002 before recanting the charge 10 years later. Banks insisted he was innocent. But he accepted a plea deal at his trial rather than face a maximum sentence of up to 40 years.

When his accuser finally recanted and the conviction was dismissed, Banks explained that his lawyer at the time recommended he take the deal. Her argument, according to Banks: "I was a big black teenager and no jury would believe anything I said."

The all-too-common lesson: Racial prejudice in America is real, it really matters and it has devastating consequences on the lives of real people.

That's why Kaepernick is speaking out by kneeling down. That's why Rapinoe joined him Sunday -- as a gay woman, she understands prejudice better than many. But this doesn't have to be a continued case of the afflicted acting as the comfortable look on passively.

It's time for straight, male, white athletes who support Kaepernick's message -- athletes like Brees, who haven't been systemically discriminated against on the basis of their very identities -- to take off their blinders and pull some weight.

It's 2016. There is, to paraphrase what King wrote so painfully long ago, no "more convenient season."