On Any Given Sunday: Race and Politics Are Optional

On Any Given Sunday: Race and Politics Are Optional
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By Raymond Codrington, Executive Director, Hi-ARTS

As the arc of justice bends so did Colin Kaepernick’s trajectory from football star to racial justice advocate. Much has been said about Kaepernick taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem last season. He started this as a statement against police brutality and the treatment of black people at the hands of law enforcement. This action was enough to both enrage and divide football fans and the general public. The optics of a heavily tattooed Colin Kaepernick taking a knee with full afro and cornrows in view invoked words like woke and unapologetic for some. For others, Kaepernick’s actions and appearance, signaled lack of patriotism and a thug-by-nature mentality. As the season wore on spectators and commentators alike shifted the focus from Kaepernick’s analysis and protest of institutional racism and law enforcement to a discussion on free speech and who can say what and where. The treatment of black people by the police began to become more of a footnote. In all, however, although NFL players are not required to stand during the national anthem, few players followed Kaepernick’s lead.

Kaepernick’s actions brought up a broader set of questions around the place of politics in sports with a majority of people feeling that the football field was no place to make a political statement. Athletes were seen as having the responsibility to play the game outside of the nation’s social, cultural and political reality especially when issues of race and racism are brought up. Also, given the NFL’s other contentious issues around Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and domestic violence, some saw the national anthem and the support of Kapernick as “not my protest.”

President Donald Trump raised the issue of the place of politics in sport to defcon five levels at a political rally in Hunstville, Alabama on September 22nd. Here, Donald Trump stated, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now, out, he’s fired!’” On Saturday, September 23rd, he then tweeted “If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect our Great American Flag (or Country) and should stand for the national anthem. If not, YOU’RE FIRED. Find something else to do!”

In reaction to these statements, during week three of the season, the general consensus in the league was that Donald Trump’s comments were divisive. As a response, in widespread displays of unity during the national anthem, the players, coaches and owners reacted in various ways including: locking arms, kneeling, or staying in the locker room while the national anthem was played. The Dallas Cowboys took the interesting step of kneeling before the national anthem and locked arms during the anthem. Unity became the theme of last Sunday and there does not seem to be any indication that this counter narrative of sports as unity will die down soon. Sunday, September 24th, the day when most of the teams displayed some form of organized reaction to Donald Trump’s comments was heralded as a day that will not be forgotten. Essentially, it was National Woke Day for the NFL. During week four, the response was more tepid with seemingly more locked arms than bent knees.

In a league where eight team owners donated a combined $7.25 million to Trump’s inaugural celebration and no team has an African American principal owner, the organized reaction around unity, and against police brutality, seemed appropriate. Now the debate around player, owner, and team response to this is beyond Colin Kaepernick. On September 26th, Sports Illustrated put out an issue featuring LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in locked arms. Kaepernick is nowhere to be found on the cover. Odd considering he is the one that started the protest. Along with the cover story, “A Nation Divided Sports United,” the magazine tweeted, “In a nation divided, the sports world is coming together.” This cover is about as impactful as President Obama’s beer summit, but at least President Obama had an understanding and willingness to name institutional racism, albeit with difficulty at times. But that was a very long ago then and this is now.

Donald Trump’s comments, and the reaction of the NFL and the country, say a lot about where we are and how we are being conditioned to process race and racism, whether that be in or outside intersectional/intersecting frameworks. We are post dog-whistle politics. Non-whites are now supposed to hear and be aware of what were once coded messages of racism. This solidifies a base and further attempts to define who belongs in this country and who does not. There is no such thing as subtly. This is a function, not a glitch in the system, and it is the way that our government functions. As a nation we have become re-tone deaf to the politics of race and culture in the new era of shock and awe racism, misogyny, transphobia, and xenophobia (insert additional phobias and isms here).

We are now accustomed to the mainstreaming of white supremacy. For example, As Trump drew attention to benign acts of resistance throughout the NFL, he hurled an expletive at what was a primarily black player base (70 percent of the league) calling them “sons of bitches” while simultaneously urging team owners to fire unpatriotic players who are not only “Un-American” but also benefit from the privilege of playing in the NFL. The culture wars have been ethered (read obliterated). We need new tools or serious refinement of the old tools to understand and combat how culture is used to define race, personhood, and nation. Weeks earlier, while tiki torch wielding white supremacists marched through Charlottesville yelling, “You will not replace us,” Donald Trump was expertly able to parse through this crowd to determine there were good and bad people in the group. Our national discourse has become absorbed into a larger narrative of false equivalencies and individual not structural interventions around racial and social justice. The question around “whose streets?” has now taken on a larger magnitude.

We are in the midst of a larger racial project that is essentially erasing race from public discourse to favor culture and compatibility as the markers of belonging. Colin Kaepernick and primarily black players in the NFL are the latest group to be “birthered.” Here I mean, being required to show proof of belonging. In this case, belonging aligns with standing for the national anthem and essentially not questioning the privilege that is given (not earned) to play in the NFL. This week it is the NFL, but other groups and organizations have and will be subjected to the same test, however we can step out of this funhouse carnival mirror version of post racial America served up nine years ago as a marker for how far we have come as a nation in regard to race and racism. While feeling momentarily unified, we are still in the dark about how to address structural racism and the institutions, policies and practices that maintain racial disparities.

Colin Kaepernick did what many would not do and he still does not have a job in the NFL because he chose to speak out. The systematic singling out of individuals and groups based on race and denying these groups resources ranging from justice to health to wealth is precisely what Kaepernick protested against. The light could not shine more intensely on why #7 is not employed in the NFL. It is truly a racially (sur)real moment. As Jay-Z, a member of the Song Writers Hall of Fame, states in his song Moonlight, “We stuck in LA LA land,” but we do not have to be.

Raymond Codrington, Executive Director of Hi-ARTS, is a cultural anthropologist who holds substantive experience in popular culture and race studies, museum and public engagement, policy analysis, and applied research.

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