The perilous fight
How quickly we forget our appreciation of Muhammad Ali.News and sports observers so quick to praise, upon his death, the life and lessons of Ali are tearing into Colin Kaepernick for his principled refusal to stand for the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner before San Francisco 49ers football games. If you’re my age or younger, I suspect this uproar you’ve been hearing for the last three days is something akin to what Ali stared down when he refused an army stint in Vietnam during the 1960s on the grounds that African-Americans had too few rights at home and that he had "no quarrel with the Viet Cong."
For his stand, Ali was stripped of his championship belt. Kaepernick’s employer, to its credit, has stood behind its quarterback, as now have several of his fellow NFL players, but we’ve been treated to online videos of 49ers fans burning their Kaepernick replica jerseys. Many players have publicly criticized their colleague, who says he is motivated to this public protest over the United States’ oppression of black people and people of color.
The jabs directed at Kaepernick would certainly sound familiar to Ali if he were still alive-- How ungrateful can a person be to thumb his nose at a country that has made him rich? Because, you see, in America, if you’re poor and black, you don’t work hard enough, but if you’re rich and black, the country is responsible for your wealth. Ali heard this argument as a refrain a half-century ago. Billie Holliday probably heard it too when she recorded “Strange Fruit” in 1939. White Americans have a hard time appreciating human action that is not selfish in motive.
Another argument is that Kaepernick isn't "specific" about what needs to change for him to end his protest, or additionally, that he has offered no solutions. That is misdirection. Kaepernick has been quite specific. He referred to "bodies in the street" and "people getting paid leave and getting away with murder." That is a reference to police killings for which there has been no justice. Government-sanctioned violence has been a tool of relentless assault upon the black community. If you want solutions, which is not a professional football player's responsibility to give us, check out 25 good solutions from columnist Shaun King. They include more female police officers, required college degrees for officers, routine police drug testing, and independent citizen review boards of police conduct.
They have also argued that protesting the flag is the wrong way to voice your anger, but his is a peaceful method of protest. He has used his platform to create awareness and he has done it at the risk of greater personal loss, including that of life and limb, than any other public personality in recent memory.
Within conservative circles, it’s permissible to many for Donald Trump to proclaim that America’s prisoners of war are unheroic, but a black man projecting ungratefulness for the privilege of living in this country is a bridge too far for their standards of patriotism. Stand between Americans and their red, white, and blue nylon fabric, and you will get burned.
When Ali died earlier this year, this blog made the argument that most Americans didn't understand the true legacy of the Champ. This latest episode is damned proof of it. Like Kaepernick, Ali saw the larger struggle beyond just his individual life as a man of color. The irony of an Ali comparison is that Kaepernick's protest is actually more justified. Why? Because it's the same struggle and 50 more years have now passed.
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Now, about the anthem itself-- and this was certainly not even part of Kaepernick’s agenda. It has a profoundly racist history. The Intercept was first with this-- the re-examining of the song's third verse, and a celebration of the American war machine at conflict with its own people two centuries ago. The song's author, a slave owner, rejoiced in the death of slaves that had recently freed themselves to fight for liberty alongside the British in the War of 1812. The stanza that sees no apparent contradiction between the existence of slaves in the land of the free...
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Black people were not considered to be of consequence in Francis Scott Key's land of the free. Kaepernick's point also.
posted by CM @ 7:14 PM
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