Skip to main content

The Real Reason NFL Players Are Taking a Knee

Two things. Vice President Pence left an NFL game last Sunday because some players took a knee at the playing of the National Anthem. He said they were disrespecting the American flag.
Second, Dallas Cowboy’s owner Jerry Jones has now said his players will all stand at the playing of the National anthem or else they can’t play. He said his players will respect the flag.
Okay, I get this obsession with the flag, which is only a symbol. I’ve written about both the absurdity and the danger of worshipping a symbol of freedom while denying people human and equal rights.
Pence and Jones are playing to the worst fears and prejudices in people. To deny professional football players, or anyone else, the right to express their disappointment and their disapproval of how certain police officers and police forces are mistreating, often outright killing, unarmed suspects, especially black men, ought to bother all Americans.
Power and money do not give anyone the right to silence protest of any kind in this country. The National Anthem protest is not about the flag, the military, or any other such thing. It is solely and entirely about a nation that blinks, looks the other way, ignores or condones police brutality and murder. Primarily brutality against and the murdering of unarmed black suspects who are judged, tried, and executed in the streets by aggressive and frightened cops who are never held accountable for their actions.
The Vice President, Jerry Jones, and other high-profile individuals in this country disgrace and abuse the considerable influence they have by shaming or threatening those who choose to exercise their Constitutional and American right to protest.
The flag and the anthem hold a lot of significance to a lot of people, and as I have written before, many want to tie them to religion and church and God. Incorrectly, I believe.
This protest is a silent, and I believe, responsible way to say to anyone watching, “I am disappointed in my country and its leaders. My country is letting me down. I’m a man of color and I feel threatened in my own country by aggressive and fearful police and a justice system that seems not to care about me and my family at all.” That, is the protest.
I do not have power or wealth and my voice counts for little, but I fully and without hesitation support the NFL players who are taking a courageous stand against police brutality and the irresponsible deaths of unarmed suspects who, until proven guilty, still remain innocent in this troubled and chaotic country.
Let's stop reframing the issue. It's not about the flag or the National Anthem. It's about the injustice in the country those symbols represent.

© 2017 Timothy Moody

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

If I had five minutes to evacuate--what would I take with me?

If I was told there was a bomb in my building and I had five minutes to evacuate my apartment I’d grab a grocery bag and quickly toss these items into it: 1. A photo of my grandparents, Mom and Pop and me, when I was 15 years old. I learned what love is made of from them. I learned what it is to be kissed on and hugged in arms so tender they felt like God’s arms. I discovered self worth from those two angels in human flesh. Of all the people in my life, they were the ones who made me feel I counted. Honestly, whatever capacity I have to love others came from them. 2. A sentimental, dog-eared, stars in the margin copy of Pat Conroy’s, “The Prince of Tides.” It is a book I have read three times and often return to for its wisdom. It is a harsh, profoundly tragic novel, the story of a family so broken and tortured by such flawed and wounded people that it is sometimes difficult to turn the next page. And yet it is the story of such Herculean courage and endurance that you want...
9 comments
Read more

A Losing Strategy

OPINION PAGE (c) 2024 Timothy Moody   The Republican strategy to mock and judge others has passed into some form of insatiable, all-devouring nastiness. It is so poisonous and contemptuous that it is now just evil.  Republican Governor of Arkansas, Sara Huckabee Sanders, suggested to a crowd of Trump supporters Tuesday night that Kamala Harris can't be humble because she doesn't have any children of her own.  When will Americans decide they don't want government leaders who are so arrogantly insensitive, as Sanders was, that they offend everyone?  This crude, villainous rhetoric transcends political partisanship. It’s evil, dangerous, and insulting.  The poet Ezra Pound’s brief lines are appropriate here, “Pull down your vanity, How mean your hates” To suggest that someone cannot be humble because they don't have children is not just a cheap political comment. It's an attack on a person’s humanity and worth.  And that is now, and has been fo...
Post a Comment
Read more

OPINION PAGE:

  OPINION PAGE © 2024 Timothy Moody The apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump last Sunday afternoon at his Trump International Golf Club was foiled by the Secret Service. Details are still coming in about it, and it's not yet known why the suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, apparently wanted to shoot Trump. The botched attempt was amateurish in every way, just as the one in July was by a kid 150 yards from Trump.  Conspiracy theorists are having a field day.  The former President is, of all things, blaming these attempts on his life with what he called the “violent rhetoric” of President Biden and VP Harris. Of course, that is absurd, especially coming from Trump, who has consistently been guilty of that very thing since he became president in 2016 and even before.  His speeches, X posts, and comments on his Truth Social platform have been endlessly filled with threatening language and incitement to violence.  He suggested those protest...
Post a Comment
Read more