I say that taking the knee is a submissive gesture
Like everything in life you can interpret anything in whatever way you want. It started as an American football player remaining sat on the bench while others stood for the national anthem as protest to racial injustice in the country. A soldier wrote to him saying he found this disrespectful so he changed it to taking a knee which both decided was a better form of protest. This was later adopted by a number of other sporting people as a way to use their high profile position to protest against racial injustice in line with its inception.