Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins will not be dissuaded from his goal of eradicating racial inequality and police brutality, after Houston Texans owner Bob McNair made incendiary remarks comparing players to inmates.
McNair compared players protesting during the national anthem to "inmates running the prison," causing a league-wide controversy.
Jenkins has been at the forefront of social progress, visiting Congress twice to discuss various social and political issues in the community.
The Eagles veteran spoke candidly about McNair's remarks and how it won't impede his goals moving forward, via ESPN's Tim McManus.
"From a player's perspective, I think we've done a great job of trying to work in a collaborative manner with the league to really come up with solutions, to move forward and create some real change, and I don't see that changing," Jenkins said. "Obviously his comments will represent him, but from a player's standpoint, we're focused on our goals, we feel like we still have an opportunity to move forward with whoever is interested in doing that, and so hopefully we can get that same type of commitment from those in league leadership.
That's our goal. It's not to appease one another, it's not to change someone's personal opinion, it's just to get some actual work done and change done. That's what our focus is going to be."
Jenkins called on players to reach a unified message and not be discouraged by McNair's comments.
"We've got players from all over with different opinions, but we've been able to keep that message the same on our end. Unfortunately, that hasn't been reciprocated," Jenkins said. "For us, we'll stay the course. We understand that there's a lot of personalities, a lot of different opinions in this, but that's the nature of what we're trying to get accomplished, is to try to work together and bring people together from different backgrounds and different mindsets to actually move forward to some change in our communities. Hopefully, all those who are interested in being involved get involved and move forward."
