One of the most inane remarks some fans of the National Football League in the US make about athletes who protest by kneeling for the national anthem is that they should not politicize sport. Sorry, but sport is no more free from politics than any other realm of human life.
Just look at the overt nationalism of the Olympic Games, at racial de-segregation of US sports leagues in the middle of the 20th century, and at how many US stadiums are funded by tax dollars. Even the use of racist symbols — the Washington Redskins, anyone? — is a political issue subject to pressure campaigns and legal action.
What these naive football fans really mean is that they would prefer to enjoy the game without a hint of reality seeping in. Perhaps they feel mental discomfort when athletes express themselves about wrongs in society. They signed up as fans of this league so they could avoid hard thinking about news, or being forced to confront the biased aggression of certain police departments and a skewed criminal justice system that almost always exonerates police officers who kill unarmed African-Americans.
That’s not their reality, so they would like to continue enjoying the game without being forced to relate to other Americans’ struggles to be heard. For them, quietly standing upright for the national anthem is the mark of patriotism. The charlatanism of nationalist sentimentality is on full display. There is no love of country without love of other Americans.
With all the nuance of a bull in a china shop, and the racial sensibilities of a southern governor during Jim Crow-era America, President Donald Trump waded into the debate. At a speech, he angrily decried those who dared kneel for the flag and said owners should fire any footballer who did. His crowd cheered.
I am old enough to remember a time when pundits thought Trump would pivot to become more presidential. Yet here he was inciting popular prejudices and passions, causing the rifts in society to expand, and all at a time when there are other urgent issues – a spate of hurricanes, the last of which leveled Puerto Rico, heightening tensions with a weapons-testing North Korea and a flailing Republican healthcare bill.
There are two glaringly awful aspects. First, at a time when a real leader would moderate a national conversation about race, in the months after Charlottesville, this president has stoked the flames. This is obviously because he’s attached to a chauvinistic constituency who elected him, and because he shares their views.
The row over footballers and the national anthem, and Donald Trump’s exploitation of it for political gain, show that the US has never come to terms with its history of racial oppression.
Will Youmans
Second, and equally alarming, his stance runs counter to the constitutional protection of the freedom of speech. He is a sort of pseudo-patriot, putting national anthem etiquette over the constitution.
In typical Trumpian fashion, he dashed off a series of tweets re-stating his argument and further priming the racial divide. In one, he said he was “So proud of NASCAR and its supporters and fans. They won’t put up with disrespecting our Country or our Flag — they said it loud and clear!” Fans of this motor sport are, like its main competitors, overwhelmingly white.
Then he claimed: “The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem.” But the kneeling began in order to bring attention to, and protest against, the epidemic of police violence against unarmed African-Americans. And the hostile reactions are suffused with racist implications that African-Americans should know their place and should not dare speak out of turn.
These subtle protests have sparked such outrage, and equally vocal support, because race continues to be a live wire in US society. Many Americans are acutely aware, and instinctively afraid, of what recognizing structural racial disparity means — that the unity symbolized by the flag and anthem is a fantasy.
America has still not really addressed the open wound of past racial oppression. It came closest in the 1960s, with the civil rights movement, and has tried to rectify inequality with surface-level programs such as affirmative action, but that has become pock-marked and weak. This failure to make amends with that past and the continuing legacy of inequity means that Trump is unlikely to be the last politician to exploit white American paranoia for political benefit.
The NFL debate is a clear reminder about how crazy many white Americans become when race is brought up. The protest started by the now-shunned quarterback Colin Kaepernick and followed by so many players, including athletes whose family members have been victims of police abuse, is thoroughly reformist in nature. The goal is simply a humanitarian one — to eradicate excessive police misbehavior. But the reaction against the players is so irrational that it loses sight of this and feeds right into a megalomaniac agenda that runs on hate.
• Will Youmans is an Assistant Professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs.