Crunch Time
There is a lot to be said and written when it comes to the actions of San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick and his refusal to stand during the playing of the national anthem at the beginning of the Aug. 26 game at Green Bay.
Kaepernick’s refusal was in protest to what he said are wrongdoings towards not only his fellow black Americans but other minorities in this country.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he told NFL Media after the game. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
Kaepernick has since said he will continue to refuse to stand until there is progress made in improving race relations in this country. His action created a firestorm of reactions, with many seeing his refusing to stand as a slap in the face to the men and women who have served this country in the military, past and present, living and deceased.
Kaepernick denies this, saying not only does he have great respect for the men and women who fought and died for this country, but also understands their sacrifices are the reasons behind his freedom to speak freely today. You can take that however you wish.
As of this writing, things keep coming to light that provide more context. One of those is a quote appearing in several articles from a great American sports legend: Jackie Robinson.
As NBC Sports writer Craig Calcaterra notes, Robinson was many things besides someone who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Of those, he was politically active, but that activism spanned both sides of the aisle, Republican and Democrat.
In his 1972 autobiography, Robinson describes his feelings during the opening ceremonies of the 1947 World Series.
“There I was, the black grandson of a slave, the son of a black sharecropper, part of a historic occasion, a symbolic hero to my people. The air was sparkling. The sunlight was warm. The band struck up the national anthem. The flag billowed in the wind. It should have been a glorious moment for me as the stirring words of the national anthem poured from the stands. Perhaps, it was, but then again, perhaps, the anthem could be called the theme song for a drama called The Noble Experiment. Today, as I look back on that opening game of my first world series, I must tell you that it was Mr. Rickey’s drama and that I was only a principal actor. As I write this twenty years later, I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag; I know that I am a black man in a white world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made.”
The thing about national symbols is they represent that entire nation — its people and its practices. Those symbols come to embody, even if never intentioned, the good, the bad and the ugly of a country.
For some, such as Kaepernick and Robinson, those symbols represented the ugliness of the racism they saw and experienced.
For others such as immigrants — legal and illegal — they represent escape from a former life, a chance at renewal and opportunity.
For veterans such as my father, the sight of the U.S. flag represents hope, pride and the triumph of freedom over tyranny.
All of these feelings are embodied in our national anthem, our flag and are mixed together. They cannot be separated without using denial, which further stokes already high levels of emotions caused by our individual experiences.
As I said at the beginning, there is a lot to be said and written about Kaepernick’s action and the issues that arise from it. There are a lot of questions to be asked, and answers to be searched for — more than there is space for here.
But they are questions we cannot refuse to ask.
John McCallum can be reached at [email protected].
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