The NFL protests and their repercussions continue to incite much heated discussion, rhetoric and bombast in sports, mainstream and social medias. Here are some of the prevarications we saw being perpetrated this past week in connection with the flag and anthem protests by NFL players:
The flag is not being protested – This was one of several statements being made this week in an effort to disconnect the love of patriotism from the reason for these protests. It hasn’t worked. Colin Kaepernick’s own words spoken immediately after his first anthem protest say it all – “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 directly hit both the flag and the country in that statement. These words remain the basis for all the kneeling, sitting, fist raising and yes, “arm-locking”, that came after. There’s no way to pretend those words weren’t said or that they now have a different meaning. Kaepernick made a big mistake by blaming the entire country, pure and simple.
Trump incited divisiveness and the protests are about him – There was a lot of talk last week about needing to properly interpret American history in order to understand these protests. However, those now blaming President Trump for what’s happening seem to be completely unaware of just the last ten years of American history. Here are a few facts that get in the way:
- When Kaepernick first protested the flag and made his statement, the President was Barack Obama and the 2016 election had not even occurred yet. At the time (August 2016), Donald Trump was well behind in the polls and Hillary Clinton was expected to be our next President. Trump had no influence at all in the origins of these protests.
- By the time the election had taken place, the NFL season was half over and many of the Kaepernick copycats had already participated in anthem protests of their own, without any knowledge that Donald Trump would be President.
- Barack Obama was elected when Colin Kaepernick was a sophomore in college and was President for most of Kaepernick’s adult life up to and including the moment of his anthem protest. If our country’s leadership is to be blamed at all for the oppression and police brutality felt and observed by Kaepernick in his adult life, then blame may rest with the previous administration, but certainly not the current one. The timeline is irrefutable.
What’s also notable about the Trump connection to all this is how quickly any allegiance to the original cause can be abandoned for another opportunity to bash the current President. Those now claiming these protests are directed at Trump truly stand for nothing and only support the protest out of vanity and a desire to be politically fashionable.
The players right to protest should not be criticized or taken away – We’ve had a lot of high profile protests in the country during the last year. As ugly as some of them became, there was never any government effort to take away the right to protest. Anyone claiming that there was doesn’t understand the Constitution and its embedded checks and balances. Implying that the President or anyone else has the unilateral ability to take away this right is just silly1. It must also be stated that these NFL player protests differ in a significant way since the protesters (the players) are “on the clock” working for their employers while they are protesting. While they certainly retain their right to free expression, their employers also have the right to impose rules of conduct on all employees in the workplace. Employers do this across all industries, and it is not a violation of their employees’ civil rights. It is disingenuous to intentionally confuse these two concepts, one of civil rights and one of employment rules, just to gain an upper hand in the debate. It also displays ignorance not to recognize these as separate concepts in the first place.
This is about social injustice, civil rights, and peaceful dissent – This is a common high school debating tactic: when weak on a specific point, raise the discussion to a more abstract level where there may be little or no disagreement. This occurred all week long as opinion writers and news commentators played the age-old game of retreating into this safe haven of abstraction by equating the player protests to far more general concepts of civil rights and social justice. The brilliant, if deceptive aspect of this sleight-of-hand tactic is that most people (us included) will never disagree with the general concepts of civil rights and social justice for all. Thus, the illusion is created that everyone is in support of the need for and mechanism of the NFL protests. The problem with this is when true public opinion actually becomes known and reveals the disconnect. The continuing slide in NFL viewership ratings (pointedly on display again this past Thursday with a further 13% drop) repeatedly shows these protests to be not only unsupported but also unwelcome.
From the beginning, the problem with this issue has been the invalid connection of the grievance to the symbols featured in the protests. The flag symbolizes our independence from England and the fight for that freedom. It has absolutely nothing to do with police brutality or oppression of African Americans and people of color. The backlash to these protests is because they come off as blaming all Americans and all America for the problem, not just those who are oppressing and/or brutalizing. Using the flag and the anthem for this was a mistake, plain and simple. It has not only undermined what may have been a just cause, it has made the protesters appear as both ungrateful and impulsive agitators.
¹ The only instance of the federal government acting to limit freedom of speech was in 1798 when the sedition act was passed by the Federalist-controlled congress and signed into law by President Adams. This act, which had a time limit attached, was allowed to expire by President Jefferson in 1801 and was never again re-authorized. The Federalist party was the precursor to the modern day Democrat party.