A few weeks ago a highly paid football quarterback refused to stand with his team for the National Anthem because he felt that he could no longer stand in support of a country which allows several unarmed minority members to be shot to death by police. This courageous young athlete could not support an imperfect country.
Some intelligent, well meaning people came out in support of this brave display of America’s First Amendment right: freedom of speech. “You may not agree with him but we must respect his right to express himself,” we are told. “Americans gave their lives fighting in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to preserve our First Amendment rights,” we are reminded. “It has begun a conversation about this important issue,” we are asked to believe and to therefore forget all the conversation of the past two years.
Some intelligent and well meaning Americans have come out against this behavior calling it unpatriotic, ungrateful and not helpful, only adding fuel to the fire.
Some team fans are burning jerseys with the quarterback’s name and number. Sales are way up with the profits going to the cause. Many promise to stop watching the team which, though once great, appears to be headed for a losing season. Some are suggesting that the player be left seated throughout not only the anthem but the entire game until he is released from the roster. He has been seated lately but still earns more than $1 million a game or more than we pay the President of the United States in annual salary and benefits to work 24/7/365 to do the hardest, most important job in the world. And we hear that CEOs are overpaid.
This young rebel is protesting the fact that there have been several cases of apparent police use of unnecessary force resulting in the deaths of suspects and that this seems disproportionately to affect black men. In the past few years we have been made aware of videos showing police officers overreacting, often to people resisting arrest. While in several of the most publicized cases it was found by local juries and federal investigations that the officers were not at fault, there were several which seemed like definite cases of deadly overreaction.
Surely no American of sound mind thinks that the use of unnecessary force by police is ever acceptable. It is clear that some officers have the wrong attitude about their work and the public they serve and that they need to be either retrained or dismissed. Surely any American with a heart can empathize with grieving parents who lost their grown children for any reason, especially if by those sworn to serve and protect.
Understanding all this, I still feel that the young man’s decision to show disrespect for flag and country was very wrong and should not be encouraged or rationalized.
Countries, like people, are never perfect - without fault. America is no exception even though it is considered exceptional. America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth. Americans believe in freedom and fairness but we don’t always practice it.
From our very beginning there have been cases of unfair lack of freedom. We were not fair to our hosts, the American Indians. We fought them, took their land, broke our treaties and then cheated them out of their royalties from oil found on their exiled land.
We were not very fair to slaves we brought from Africa. They were not considered to be equal to people of European ancestry. When slavery was ended after a few hundred years, blacks were mistreated under Jim Crow policies that kept them separate and unequal.
We were not very fair to Americans of Japanese heritage in the 1940s. Their freedom was denied them, without due process, when they were removed from their homes and sent to resettlement centers for fear that they might help the Japanese invade America. This overreaction was ordered by F.D.R., America’s most liberal leader.
Today, 33 million Americans, ten percent of our population, live in poverty. While America’s safety nets help reduce the suffering, the suffering still exists in this land of such great wealth and generosity. This does not seem fair and its victims do not seem very free.
Blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population for a total of 40 million people. One out of four black Americans is considered poor. That means 10 million people or one out of every three Americans living in poverty is black. Poverty is the leading cause of crime and violence.
While several people each year die unnecessarily in police hands, with even one being too many, each year almost 7,000 murder victims in America are black as are - 93% of their assailants.
America, while great, is not perfect. We are not perfect. The world is not perfect. Life is not perfect.
But I don’t think that the right response is to show disrespect, to withdraw one’s allegiance because work needs be done. I don’t think that protest marches and demonstrations sure to bring out the violent fringe are the answer. I don’t think that blocking streets or bridges is acceptable. This athlete did not open our eyes to a flaw in America that we were not painfully aware of. We have been hearing about it for years - again and again.
So what would work? What could these well paid professional athletes do to make a difference - to make lives better for Americans and to make America a better country for it?
They can do what our billionaires are doing - they can promise to give most of their overly generous earnings to organizations that can help ameliorate social problems causing and caused by poverty. They could donate tens of millions to their city’s or state’s schools to pay teachers more, build more schools and have smaller class sizes so teachers can know their students and their needs. They could donate millions to help released prisoners in their state to find their way back to the mainstream avoiding future crime and violence. They could donate money for drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers and mental health facilities.
It’s easy to charge the field with hands up (before finding out that there were actually no hands up during the referenced police encounter) or to sit down during the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance. It takes more character to sacrifice ourselves to help ease the suffering. Surely, this quarterback could afford to pledge $10 million a year to help relieve the causes of suffering in his community and he can urge all his fellow athletes to also make a pledge of financial support.
And instead of staging protest marches that lead to violence, looting and destruction, groups that want lives to matter can do their share by going into the most dangerous parts of their communities and standing as a peace barrier between rival gangs and factions in order to end the bloodshed. They can go to schools and tell students to stay in school, study hard and not use drugs or alcohol. They could caution girls about the risks involved in a certain intimate romantic activity that leads to unintentional parenthood.
We all can work hard to make America a better place for all of its citizens. We can stand up and pledge our undying allegiance to our beloved, though still imperfect, homeland.
Some intelligent, well meaning people came out in support of this brave display of America’s First Amendment right: freedom of speech. “You may not agree with him but we must respect his right to express himself,” we are told. “Americans gave their lives fighting in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to preserve our First Amendment rights,” we are reminded. “It has begun a conversation about this important issue,” we are asked to believe and to therefore forget all the conversation of the past two years.
Some intelligent and well meaning Americans have come out against this behavior calling it unpatriotic, ungrateful and not helpful, only adding fuel to the fire.
Some team fans are burning jerseys with the quarterback’s name and number. Sales are way up with the profits going to the cause. Many promise to stop watching the team which, though once great, appears to be headed for a losing season. Some are suggesting that the player be left seated throughout not only the anthem but the entire game until he is released from the roster. He has been seated lately but still earns more than $1 million a game or more than we pay the President of the United States in annual salary and benefits to work 24/7/365 to do the hardest, most important job in the world. And we hear that CEOs are overpaid.
This young rebel is protesting the fact that there have been several cases of apparent police use of unnecessary force resulting in the deaths of suspects and that this seems disproportionately to affect black men. In the past few years we have been made aware of videos showing police officers overreacting, often to people resisting arrest. While in several of the most publicized cases it was found by local juries and federal investigations that the officers were not at fault, there were several which seemed like definite cases of deadly overreaction.
Surely no American of sound mind thinks that the use of unnecessary force by police is ever acceptable. It is clear that some officers have the wrong attitude about their work and the public they serve and that they need to be either retrained or dismissed. Surely any American with a heart can empathize with grieving parents who lost their grown children for any reason, especially if by those sworn to serve and protect.
Understanding all this, I still feel that the young man’s decision to show disrespect for flag and country was very wrong and should not be encouraged or rationalized.
Countries, like people, are never perfect - without fault. America is no exception even though it is considered exceptional. America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth. Americans believe in freedom and fairness but we don’t always practice it.
From our very beginning there have been cases of unfair lack of freedom. We were not fair to our hosts, the American Indians. We fought them, took their land, broke our treaties and then cheated them out of their royalties from oil found on their exiled land.
We were not very fair to slaves we brought from Africa. They were not considered to be equal to people of European ancestry. When slavery was ended after a few hundred years, blacks were mistreated under Jim Crow policies that kept them separate and unequal.
We were not very fair to Americans of Japanese heritage in the 1940s. Their freedom was denied them, without due process, when they were removed from their homes and sent to resettlement centers for fear that they might help the Japanese invade America. This overreaction was ordered by F.D.R., America’s most liberal leader.
Today, 33 million Americans, ten percent of our population, live in poverty. While America’s safety nets help reduce the suffering, the suffering still exists in this land of such great wealth and generosity. This does not seem fair and its victims do not seem very free.
Blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population for a total of 40 million people. One out of four black Americans is considered poor. That means 10 million people or one out of every three Americans living in poverty is black. Poverty is the leading cause of crime and violence.
While several people each year die unnecessarily in police hands, with even one being too many, each year almost 7,000 murder victims in America are black as are - 93% of their assailants.
America, while great, is not perfect. We are not perfect. The world is not perfect. Life is not perfect.
But I don’t think that the right response is to show disrespect, to withdraw one’s allegiance because work needs be done. I don’t think that protest marches and demonstrations sure to bring out the violent fringe are the answer. I don’t think that blocking streets or bridges is acceptable. This athlete did not open our eyes to a flaw in America that we were not painfully aware of. We have been hearing about it for years - again and again.
So what would work? What could these well paid professional athletes do to make a difference - to make lives better for Americans and to make America a better country for it?
They can do what our billionaires are doing - they can promise to give most of their overly generous earnings to organizations that can help ameliorate social problems causing and caused by poverty. They could donate tens of millions to their city’s or state’s schools to pay teachers more, build more schools and have smaller class sizes so teachers can know their students and their needs. They could donate millions to help released prisoners in their state to find their way back to the mainstream avoiding future crime and violence. They could donate money for drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers and mental health facilities.
It’s easy to charge the field with hands up (before finding out that there were actually no hands up during the referenced police encounter) or to sit down during the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance. It takes more character to sacrifice ourselves to help ease the suffering. Surely, this quarterback could afford to pledge $10 million a year to help relieve the causes of suffering in his community and he can urge all his fellow athletes to also make a pledge of financial support.
And instead of staging protest marches that lead to violence, looting and destruction, groups that want lives to matter can do their share by going into the most dangerous parts of their communities and standing as a peace barrier between rival gangs and factions in order to end the bloodshed. They can go to schools and tell students to stay in school, study hard and not use drugs or alcohol. They could caution girls about the risks involved in a certain intimate romantic activity that leads to unintentional parenthood.
We all can work hard to make America a better place for all of its citizens. We can stand up and pledge our undying allegiance to our beloved, though still imperfect, homeland.
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