Colin, We (Stand) Sit With You

Colin, We (Stand) Sit With You
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As the last 397 years bear witness, America hasn’t been very American to the black ones.

To many, including San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, this is the legacy our national anthem brags about.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said during a recent postgame interview, after refusing to stand for the nation’s hymn. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Jim Brown is to Colin Kaepernick as O.J. Simpson is to Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, who, when asked about a comment he made related to being an African American quarterback, said, “I don’t want this to be about race, because it’s not. It’s not. Like, we’re beyond that. As a nation.”

Kaepernick: unapologetically firm and courageous, willing to risk it all. Newton: accommodatingly non-threatening and cowardly, playing it safe.

Kaepernick: Inspiring. Newton: Disheartening.

If we’re honest, the Star Spangled Banner is a hypocritical backdrop to the African American experience. Blacks have been continuous subjects of legal nooses that restrict social inclusion, economic opportunity, and political access. This arrangement is constant in law enforcement, education, employment, housing, entrepreneurship, and the voting booth. Disproportionate numbers are trapped in chronic, segregated and isolated communities of poverty.

Kaepernick makes a valid point addressing the tyranny in black communities. In line with our first amendment freedoms, he took a moral and permissible stance.

Kaepernick has been unequivocal in his support of America’s ideals. The 397-year old problem is that America hasn’t been unequivocal in its application toward people of color. To protest the application of America’s ideals, is not to refute its principles. Rather, it’s to call into question whether our nation practices what it preaches (or sings). When our ideals and the application stand in paralleled symmetry for white communities and in stark opposition for black communities, there ought to be a moral imperative to not only oppose the circumstance, but address the problem.

“The beauty of where we are right now is that we are dealing in conflicted times and the only beauty that we can elicit from this is to embrace the things that have kept our country surviving”, said NFL players union chief DeMaurice Smith. “Things like freedom of speech, freedom of expression.”

To be sure, the country’s rising tide has lifted all boats, but American racism makes sure the white ones rise faster and higher than the black ones.

The vitriol reaction to Kaepernick’s actions gives credence to the widely unknown third verse of the anthem highlighting the nation’s disregard for black people:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore, That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion A home and a Country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave, And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave

The irony is, despite efforts that kept it in relative obscurity, the intended actions of the third stanza sang louder than the rest of the words ever have. It’s a patriotic contradiction to sing an anthem celebrating American ideals while being complicit in the killing of blacks seeking the very freedom, opportunity, and access our country reserves for its white citizenry. The lyrics then, and the plight of black communities now, challenges any notion that times have changed.

To what extent should anyone stand up for the national anthem ever again? Supporting America’s ideals require embracing Kaepernick’s stance. Embracing Kaepernick’s stance supports America’s ideals. Moral creed and human deed go hand in hand. Adopting one while abandoning the other is a hypocritical zero sum game. In the spirit of our national anthem, freedom and equality require protests in the streets, in the lecture halls, in the locker-rooms, in the boardrooms, and at the polls.

Kaepernick’s audacity, courage, and boldness should be American aspirations as we go about correcting the inconsistency between its ideals and how it goes about actualizing them.

So keep sitting Colin. And scoot over to make some room for the rest of us.

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