The U.S. is in the grip of football fever this time every year. However, this season, the heat and fury is for a different reason. The National Football League (NFL), the country’s biggest sporting obsession, has become the field for an intense debate on racial justice and police brutality against African Americans. Football players, a disproportionate number of whom are blacks, have devised a novel mode of protest by refusing to stand up when the national anthem is played before the game.
Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick started it last year, telling that he would not “stand up to show pride for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour”. He is jobless this year as none of the 32 teams hired him but the protest has caught on. This season, which is into its fourth week now, at least 200 players and several team owners have joined the anthem protest — some by kneeling and some by staying in locker rooms when it is sung.
Anti-American?
In a pattern familiar to Indians, American ultranationalists led by President Donald Trump have launched a drive to label the protesters as ‘anti-American’ and ‘anti-national’. The vilification drive has yet another familiar component — the allegation that they are dishonouring the sacrifices of the country’s soldiers.
Mr. Trump has dedicated a large amount of his time and energy to disparaging the protests in the last two weeks. At one rally, he said: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that *** off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired’!” He tweeted: “The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race… It is about respect for our country, flag and national anthem.”
But is it indeed about race and justice, protesters and their supporters say. African Americans are incarcerated at more than five times the rate of white people in America; and they are three times more likely to be killed by the police than white people. In 2017, so far, 207 black people have been killed in police shootings. “There is no way that black person should feel less human than a white man. Everybody should be seen as equal. Until that happens... there is never going to be a change,” Seattle Seahawks player Michael Bennett said on CNN on Wednesday. The entire Seahawks team is boycotting the anthem. “As a team, we have decided... we will not stand for the injustice that has plagued people of colour in this country,” it said.
While Mr. Trump and his supporters have sought to convert it into a ‘soliders vs. protesters’ issue and are exhorting people to boycott the tournament, many have started watching football in protest. While some veterans’ groups have questioned the mode of protest, some have come out openly in favour of the players. Taya Kyle, the widow of Chris Kyle, an American Navy SEAL sniper, said on Facebook in a post critical of the protests: “You are asking us to abandon what we loved about togetherness and make choices of division. You, dear NFL, have taken that. You have lost me here.” Rory Fanning, an ex-soldier who served in Afghanistan expressed a different view last year when he said: “Kaepernick is choosing not to lie to himself, the world, or all the people who thought they died to ensure we lived in a free country, by claiming this is the land of the free when it is not... This is the opposite of an insult to those who died thinking they were fighting for liberty.”
The picture of a John Middlemas, 97, a Second World War veteran, kneeling down in support of the cause and tweeted by his grandson went viral. “(T)hose kids have every right to protest,” the post said.
(Varghese K. George works for The Hindu and is based in Washington DC)
