Tuesday, September 20, 2016

On the right of protest

What I'm about to write now will alienate some people.
I don't care.
I can't care. Not when Terence Crutcher is dead at the hands of Tulsa police. An unarmed man with his hands in the air is gone.
Last night, for the first time in over 43 years on this planet, when I had an opportunity to stand for the national anthem and salute, I chose not to.
I was at a bar watching the Monday Night Football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Chicago Bears. Most people at bars don't reflexively stand up and salute the flag. Until last night, I did, even drawing ridicule as a teenager for that display of patriotic fervor.
My thoughts during the anthem turned to the losses of black lives when white lives are often preserved.
Meanwhile, people still vilify Colin Kaepernick. He makes too much money to protest. He's an athlete. He should worry more about keeping his job than about social issues.
Bull.
Megan Rapinoe was in the area earlier this month as her Seattle Reign got set to take on the Washington Spirit in a National Women's Soccer League match. She intended to kneel during the national anthem, joining a protest Kaepernick started during a preseason NFL game.
However, Spirit owner Bill Lynch had other ideas. He had the stadium play the anthem while the teams were still in the locker room, preventing Rapinoe from protesting.
Players from various teams ranging from college to high school and earlier have taken to kneeling, some under threat of suspension from school or from the team. John Tortorella, the head coach of the United States's World Cup of Hockey team said if any players sat on the bench during the anthem, they would remain seated for the entire game.
An employer may have the right to impose consequences for speech. That's why people like Lindsey Stone can be fired for flipping the bird and pantomiming screaming next to a sign that asks for silent respect for the fallen, which happened in 2012 near Arlington National Cemetery. However, school systems would run afoul of the Constitution for suspending players who choose to protest.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1943 in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette that schools cannot force students to stand and salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance. As representatives of the state, school systems cannot compel patriotism.
What changed last night? Nothing. And that's the problem.
The system problems Kaepernick's protests seek to address haven't gone away. They haven't even been addressed through anything more than talk. Far too many black children are being shot dead. Far too many black adults are being harassed where white adults are given the benefit of the doubt. For every Cory Batey who is sentenced to 15 years in prison for rape, there's a Brock Turner who serves just three months. The difference? Batey is black. Turner is white. And an Olympian-potential swimmer at that.
What changed last night? Everything. And that's the point.
For 43 years, I fought even the prospect of changing the national anthem. If it weren't for the events that led to the anthem's being written, we wouldn't have a country, I'd argue. The fact that Baltimore repelled the British during the War of 1812 was a matter of pride in my home state.
What changed? Debate over whether the national anthem is racist gives me pause to consider what was not even up for discussion just weeks ago. Ultimately, I still don't think the anthem should be changed, though more out of a sense of needing to learn the lessons of history than a sense of blind fervor.
Rather than directing anger toward people like Kaepernick and Rapinoe for not standing at attention when overzealous nationalists would like to force them to, we should direct our outrage against a system that led them to the point where simply kneeling became the latest shot heard around the world.