The owners in the National Football League have come up with a 'compromise' between the pressures from the President and other conservatives and the free-speech rights of their players. There will be no more demonstrations during the national anthem before games, but players who do not want to stand for the national anthem can remain in the clubhouse until the game actually begins.
The players who would have been kneeling during the national anthem in order to protest police brutality against young black men and women are not satisfied with this new rule. They have protested that they are as patriotic as the owners (or the President). They feel that their love of their country is being impugned and they are defending themselves.
But what is this "love of country"?
This is an apt time to raise that question. We talk a lot about patriotism on Memorial Day.
It is one of the national holidays where it is traditional for us to tell outrageous lies about who we are and how we live our lives. Having just passed that milestone, it is now time to look at the truth.
It seems as if protesting current police practices and protesting economic inequalities which leave black Americans disproportionately poor, in poor health and in prison is perceived as unpatriotic by conservatives. When they love their country, they love the country as it is replete with injustices, with unimaginable wealth for some and serious deprivations for others.
The protesters, on the other hand, are deeply troubled by prevailing injustices. They cannot love the country as it is. They do not love the actual country. They love the possibilities of change, of re-distributing opportunities, of opening possibilities to those who now have little to look forward to. They love the many Americans – well-known leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks and ordinary citizens whose names we do not know – who take our promise to ourselves of freedom and equality sufficiently seriously to resist injustices where they see them, doggedly refusing to be treated as less worthy of respect than the rich and famous such as the owners of football teams.
In the clash over protests before football games two different versions of patriotism confront each other. Love of country as acceptance of all our failings, of all the ways in which we fall so very short of the brave and shining pronouncements about American democracy, and love of country as love of our ideals and commitment to struggling to approximate them more closely than we are doing today.
The conservative patriot loves America as she is today including its pervasive racism, including the second-rate status of women, including its commitment to redistribute resources from the poor to the rich – as in the most recent tax reform law. The largely unpunished murders of black people by police contravene the "rule of law" which we are so proud of but honor more by violating than by practicing it. But conservatives accept that too.
The conservative patriotism of the owners in the National Football League is self-serving. America, as she is, has made them very rich.
The love of country of the players protesting injustice, is the only patriotism that is morally defensible—protesting injustices particularly against young Black whose life is in constant danger and for whom it is very difficult to get a good education and profitable employment legally. By banishing that patriotism to the clubhouse, out of sight, the owners manifest that what they love is being rich not any of the ideals of their country.
The so-called compromise over political protest before football games is truly shameful.
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