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This viral photo says a lot about what the NFL protests are actually about.

On Sept. 27, photographer Brendan Smialowski snapped this photo while traveling with President Donald Trump's motorcade in Indianapolis.

Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images.

The president was in town to deliver a speech on tax reform.

On the right side of the frame is Marvin L. Boatright, a 60-year-old U.S. Army veteran.

In the photo, he's wearing an American Legion cap and has the U.S. flag folded in his arms. Notably, he is also kneeling.

Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images.

Smialowski wasn't the only photographer who captured the moment. Other photographers and news outlets picked it up as well. Given the recent attention on the NFL's #TakeAKnee protests against racism and police brutality, the photo quickly went viral.

Last week at a rally in Alabama, Trump slammed NFL players for protesting by kneeling during the national anthem, suggesting any athlete who does so is a "son of a bitch" who deserves to be fired.

Boatright — who served in the Army's 1st Cavalry from 1974 to 1976 and whose father served in World War II — clearly disagrees with the president.

"We love this country," Boatright told HuffPost after the photos spread far and wide. "We love this flag. But we also love life and liberty for all humanity."

Boatright kneels outside the funeral home his family owns in Indianapolis. Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images.

He explained to the outlet (emphasis added):

“As a veteran, and as an African-American, we have already and we continue to serve for God and country. But you can have a love of God and country and still be against social injustice. You don’t have to separate one from the other. ... For the commander-in-chief to call our citizens ‘sons of a bitches’ was totally wrong and beneath the dignity of the office that he holds."

The NFL protests, as Boatright alluded to, have been meant to raise awareness about systemic racism in our law enforcement and criminal justice systems, particularly when it comes to police brutality.

The protests aren't about the flag or the anthem.

Other photos of vets kneeling have made the similar, striking point: Kneeling during the national anthem is not unpatriotic.

Like this pic of 97-year-old John Middlemas, who served in the Navy for 21 years — during World War II, the Korean War, and the Cold War — BuzzFeed News reported.

"Those kids have every right to protest," Middlemas said of the NFL players.

A photo of Middlemas, shared on Twitter by his grandson, Brennan Gilmore, was retweeted more than 168,000 times to date.

As Gilmore told BuzzFeed:

"Members of the military like my grandfather who risked their lives or fought for this country did not do so because of symbols like the flag or the anthem, but because of the ideas those symbols represent — like freedom of speech, and equality, and justice for all."

TV producer and veteran Norman Lear, 95, also shared photos of himself on Twitter: "I [take a knee], once more, in solidarity with my brothers [and] sisters still fighting [for] equality [and] justice," he wrote.

Through all of the noise, these protests really are about ensuring equality for all Americans, Boatright expressed — and we have a long way to go.

But Boatright, a grandfather of four, is hopeful for what the future holds.

"I would want my children to be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin; you cannot ask for anything greater," he noted to HuffPost. "We’ve not reached it yet, but I think we’ll get there."

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Spurs coach Gregg Popovich takes on Trump and racism in a powerful speech.

It's time we had some difficult conversations as a country.

San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich has a bone to pick with President Donald Trump's attitude toward politics and sports.

An outspoken critic of Trump, the five-time NBA champion coach laid into the president during a press conference on Monday, critiquing his "childishness" and "gratuitous fear-mongering." This came after a weekend in which Trump uninvited the NBA champion Golden State Warriors from the White House and raged against NFL players protesting police violence.

"Our country is an embarrassment to the world," Popovich added, referencing Trump's antics during his first months in office.

Popovich didn't stop there.

He brought the conversation back around to the real topic at hand: race and racism in America.

"Obviously, race is the elephant in the room, and we all understand that," he said, shrugging off the idea that if we simply stop talking about racism that it'll somehow just go away.

"There has to be an uncomfortable element in the discourse for anything to change, whether it's the LGBT community or women's suffrage, race, it doesn't matter," he said. "People have to be made to feel uncomfortable and especially white people because we're comfortable."

"We still have no clue of what being born white means," he said.

Using a (what else?) sports metaphor, Popovich explained that being born white is like having a head start during a 100-meter dash. While there's no guarantee the head start means you'll win the race and while your hard work you put into training for the run shouldn't be discounted, it's still a head start. There shouldn't be any harm in acknowledging the advantage you were given.

"[White people] have advantages that are systemically, culturally, psychologically there," he explained. "And they have been built up and cemented for hundreds of years. But many people can't look at it, it's too difficult. It can't be something that is on their plate on a daily basis. People want to hold their position, people want the status quo, people don't want to give that up. Until it's given up, it's not going to be fixed."

Popovich's metaphor is a spot-on example of what exactly the oft misunderstood phrase "white privilege" means.

Replying to Sports Illustrated's tweet about Popovich's comments, one person remarked, "Hey Pop, where do I cash my 'congrats on being white' check? Don't think that came with my birth certificate, I must've gotten ripped off." The tweet was a classic example of what happens when white people are asked to consider their position and what their whiteness means in the world.

Poet Remi Kanazi responded brilliantly: "You cash it whenever you're pulled over by a cop, in a store not being followed, at an interview for a job, or trying to get an apartment."

No person should have to worry about being shot by the police, treated with suspicion, or discriminated against in the workplace because of the color of their skin. Right now, in America, white people don't have to worry about that. Non-white people do. The goal in the fight for racial justice isn't to bring privileged groups down, but to lift oppressed groups up. It's about finding the same starting line in the metaphorical 100-meter dash.

Watch Popovich's comments on race below:

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'I take it personally': NFL star chokes up responding to Trump's attacks.

President Donald Trump's divisive comments on the NFL protests are making national headlines, but to Miami Dolphin Michael Thomas, the remarks hit close to home.

Michael Thomas. Photo by Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Sirius XM.

Speaking to reporters from the locker room on Sunday, Thomas — who has knelt during the national anthem before games — responded to Trump's claim that a "son of a bitch" like him should be fired for refusing to stand.

Over the past several months, many players have kneeled during the national anthem in a peaceful, silent protest to draw attention to racial injustice — namely, police brutality targeting people of color — since former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling last season.

"As a man, as a father, as an African-American man, as somebody in the NFL who’s one of those 'sons of bitches,' yeah I take it personally," Thomas told reporters. "But at the same time, like I said in my Twitter posts, it’s bigger than me."

"I got a daughter; she’s going to have to live in this world," Thomas told reporters, holding back tears.

"I’m going to do whatever I got to do to make sure she can look at her dad and be like, 'Hey, you did something, you tried to make a change.'"

Thomas' emotional response shows how deep the president's remarks have cut and why more athletes are now stepping up — or, rather, kneeling down — to spark change.

Controversy surrounding the NFL protests boiled over this past weekend, after the president waded back into the world of political activism in pro sports.

Trump set off a firestorm Friday night at his rally in Alabama, claiming NFL athletes who sit or kneel during the protests should be fired. The following morning, he slammed Stephen Curry for planning to skip his team's potential White House visit after winning the NBA national championship in June: "invitation is withdrawn!" the president tweeted. LeBron James jumped into the foray to defend Curry shortly thereafter, calling the president a "bum."

Trump's bombastic remarks prompted a wave of players to kneel on Sunday. According to NPR, roughly 200 NFL athletes protested as "The Star-Spangled Banner" played before their respective games.

Several Detroit Lions players kneeled during their game on Sept. 24, 2017. Photo by Rey Del Rio/Getty Images.

Critics have slammed Trump for stoking a fire solely to enrage his base while ignoring other dire issues.

"He wanted a reaction; he got that reaction," Michael Steele, former Republican National Committee Chairman, told NBC News. "It’s very disappointing — the same level of stuff we get from the president that doesn’t advance a genuine conversation but polarizes people into camps."

Meanwhile, dilemmas are playing out on the national and global stages — the GOP's unpopular Graham-Cassidy health bill, relations with North Korea, devastation in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria — with little leadership or comment from the president.

"It just amazes me with everything else that's going on in this world, especially involving the U.S., that’s what you’re concerned about, my man?" Thomas noted to reporters on Sunday. "You’re the leader of the free world — this is what you’re talking about?"

It appears so.

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John Lewis testified against Jeff Sessions because he knows exactly what's at stake.

On March 7, 1965, John Lewis was smashed in the head by an Alabama state trooper while protesting for the right to vote.

The impact fractured his skull. Two weeks later, Lewis marched with Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, which helped convince Congress to pass the original Voting Rights Act into law.

Today, Lewis is a U.S. Congressman, and with colleagues from the Congressional Black Caucus sitting behind him, he recalled those events in his testimony against fellow Alabamian Jeff Sessions' nomination for attorney general.

Sessions' repeated pledges to enforce "law and order" in his new role struck a discordant note with Lewis, whose politics were molded by a society where that phrase meant different things to different groups of people.

Representative John Lewis. Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images.

"Those who are committed to equal justice on our society wonder whether Senator Sessions’ call for 'law and order' will mean today what it meant in Alabama when I was coming up back then," Lewis said.

Sen. Cory Booker's testimony may have grabbed most of the pre-hearing headlines — but it was Lewis' testimony that spoke most powerfully to what's at stake with Sessions' nomination.

With his address, Booker became the first sitting senator to testify against a colleague in a hearing, and he spoke eloquently about the need to continue important work on criminal justice reform and to defend the rights of marginalized people.

Lewis placed Booker's calls in historical context, citing the unfinished work of the civil rights movement as the primary reason to demand an attorney general defend its hard-won gains. Sessions has criticized Black Lives Matter for making "radical" statements and essentially contributing to demoralization among law enforcement.

“We can pretend that the law is blind. We can pretend that it’s evenhanded. But if we are honest with ourselves, we know that we are called upon daily by the people we represent to help them deal with unfairness in how the law is written and enforced," Lewis said in his testimony.

Lewis also used his testimony to rebut an early exchange between Sessions and committee member Lindsay Graham, where Sessions revealed that it was "very painful" to be labeled a bigot and a racist.

In his first day of hearings, Sessions called parts of the Voting Rights Act "intrusive" and renewed his support for Voter ID laws, which critics say depress minority turnout.

Senator Jeff Sessions. Photo by Molly Riley/Getty Images.

"It doesn’t matter how Senator Sessions may smile, how friendly he may be, how he may speak to you. But we need someone who’s going to stand up, speak up, and speak out for the people that need help," Lewis said, "for people who have been discriminated against."

With Republican control of the Senate, Sessions will likely be confirmed. Still, as he steps into the role, he'd be wise to heed Lewis' final words of the afternoon.

"We need someone as attorney general who’s going to look out for all of us and not just for some of us," Lewis concluded.

Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.

Sessions' Senate colleagues — on both sides of the aisle — clearly think he's a nice guy. Several of his colleagues of color, including an attorney worked under him in Alabama, testified that he treated them with the utmost respect. That's great, but only goes so far.

When faced with the monumental task of safeguarding the civil rights for all Americans, Lewis is spot-on in his analysis.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

Courtesy is nice.

Words are nice.

But it's actions that truly count.

Watch Representative John Lewis' congressional testimony against Senator Sessions in its entirety here:

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