You're 100% right they'd receive criticism.
2) Tommie Smith and John Carlos. 1968 Olympics. Remember what they were protesting? Not just black civil rights, it was a human rights fist and there were white protestors too, including the white guy there who protested Australia's "white Australia policy". They were protesting because the man who led the IOC, Avery Brundage, was a white Supremacist who coddled and fought for inclusion of apartheid states (South Africa and Rhodesia), did not hire any black officials, and fought to include Nazi Germany in the Olympics in the 1930s, yet was notoriously against black civil rights. So they protested... and they were booed by the crowd, and were expelled from the Games, and were criticized by America for it. Brent Musburger called them "black-skinned stormtroopers" not realizing the fucking irony of calling black athletes Nazis when they're protesting racism and Naziism. And Avery Brundage, that IOC head, afterwards released a statement where he defended allowing the Nazi salute at protests but called the black power fist offensive. So yeah, wearing a black glove apparently has also been called worse than supporting Nazis and apartheid at the Olympics.
3) Even now people wearing simple black armbands or t-shirts gets shit on. A lawyer wearing a black armband and a BLM pin was made to remove it by the judge - despite her being a public defender representing a white client. LeBron and plenty in the NBA got shit on for wearing t-shirts in response to the death of Eric Garner, crushed by cops. And of course, Adam Silver told them not to wear the shirts in warm-ups, saying "I respect Derrick Rose and all of our players for voicing their personal views on important issues but my preference would be for players to abide by our on-court attire rules." And in response to kneeling this year, of course, he said "One of the core principles of this country is freedom of expression. Given the platform that they have, whether it's the regular engagement they have with the media, whether it's social media, whether it's other opportunities they have to work in the communities, they have those opportunities for their voices to be heard."
As usual, with milquetoasts "moderates", it's "Protest respectfully. Don't do A, do B." And next year when you do B, they insist "No that's offensive and disrespectful to veterans (??), you should protest by doing A instead."
In reality, it's always been just "Don't protest."
