I think the reality is that white people in this country are so oblivious to white privilege and systemic, institutional racism that any gesture unifying them is unlikely. Part of the problem is while many people say they are against racism, they are only referring to the overt direct racism. They don't believe that structural, institutional racism and white privilege exist. The recent action of taking the knee has not really been about drawing attention to direct racism, but to the structural, institutional racism that black and other ethnic minority people face on a daily basis. It was always going to be divisive because the reality is that most important issues are. Rashford's feed the children is an more of an exception to the rule and even then you still had Tory MPs campaigning against the issue. MLK is one of a long line of black activists and he is actually in the middle and there have been plenty more since and there still are as racism and structural, institutional racism is still a huge issue. He didn't decide one day to just start a campaign and once black people were given the vote he would stop. It's an ongoing process and an ongoing conversation and often it means persevering even when many people disagree with you, because especially in this case you are trying to change societal institutions and values that have developed over centuries. It was always going to be divisive. However, the more people talk about it, discuss it and research it, the more opportunity there is for people to change their minds.
I don't have data, but I am positive that more people will have reassessed their views as racist and started to think more about racism than will have been against racism and then decided that taking the knee means they should stop being anti racist. As I said most people who have moved from being anti-racist to anti taking the knee will probably have been surface anti-racism people who only focused on direct racism.
As for whether this symbol has run it's course and another symbol would be more effective. I think that's the wrong way to view it. Even if a new, effective anti-racism symbol was created, people who want to shut the conversation down would find a way to tarnish that too. All that would happen is you would keep moving from new symbol to new symbol, and that would be even worse as ordinary people was just get confused. While this symbol may be divisive, it certainly is clear with what it means.
Finally, the events of the past week and England nearly winning have actually gone a long way to showing why taking the knee is important and I think many people will have reassessed their view. Someone else mentioned this in regards to those politicians who have changed their tune and are coming off as hypocrites. Many other people will be the same and while they may be hypocrites, at least they have acknowledge indirectly that they were wrong.
I think that the conversation it generates is far more important that trying to be a unifying symbol that will defeat racism, because that ultimately is a pipe dream, this is a long process that will take time, but as long as people keep talking about it, progress will be made.
