The flag and
the anthem do represent some of our history, our deeds and our life as a
nation. Much of that life deserves to be
honored and perhaps revered. But a flag
is not that which it represents; it is at most a reminder of that which makes a
nation worthy of respect, honor, praise and celebration, even of sacrifice. To imbue and infuse the flag or the national
anthem with an intrinsic power, value or life, is to make animated idolatrous
objects of inanimate objects, transforming them into something they are not
able to be.
What makes
such idolatry a problem is exactly what Donald Trump has done in attempting to
punish or disparage people who will not “respect” (“worship?”) those lifeless
objects. For that very reason, it is appropriate to call Trump to account for undermining
a fundamental right of all Americans granted under the First Amendment: the “right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for redress of grievances.”
There seems
to be a tendency in this country to make patriotic symbols, songs, and relics
into something they are not meant to be: a test of patriotism. One problem: symbols mean different things to
different citizens, and people with different backgrounds. Trump wants the flag and the anthem to
represent something that he considers patriotic. He wants the flag to symbolize victory in
wars, a history full of triumphs, and certainly the bravery and courage of men
and women (maybe?) in the military. He
certainly wants it to represent unfettered capitalism, earning of much profit,
the triumph of making contracts and developing land into thriving businesses
and enterprises. Perhaps he even
believes that the flag represents the freedoms and liberties that he enjoys as
a rich white man. Clearly, Trump does
not recognize that national symbols may represent a much different reality to
others. He obviously cannot relate to
many of the players in the NFL who have negative feelings about some of the history
that the flag represents to them, not all of it in the past.
Another
problem is the inadequacy of a symbol itself to inspire. Take the national anthem. It supposedly represents bravery and honor in
battle, and the inspiration of seeing the flag survive the “rockets’ red glare,
the bombs bursting in air.” Our national anthem is one more attempt to make the
flag into an idol, a living breathing entity with power to inspire even though it
has nothing to offer except its inanimate presence. In contrast, those embroiled in the background
battle itself receive no mention. Further,
our national anthem makes no mention of American humanitarianism, our many
worthwhile institutions, or our beautiful land.
Our anthem glorifies an object that survives a battle, and glorifies war
as somehow positive and uplifting. ‘America’
and ‘America the Beautiful’ are much more reflective of the national character
than what was chosen as our “national anthem.”
Right there
is my argument with the Donald and many of his followers. The focus of this nation’s patriotism needs
to be on the People, not on the flag or the anthem, nor on statues, slogans,
fables, or even on the wars we have fought and sometimes won. We need to stop making war and victory in war
the over-whelming theme of our symbols, but instead, need to emphasize our
constitutional mission of making life better for people -- ourselves and
others. When our symbols of national
pride fail to represent our national character, and our fundamental democratic
and humanitarian values, they deserve to be questioned as to their
validity. But more to the point of the current
protests, it is our government that needs to be called to account for those
actions and policies that undermine that character and that Mission.
So, here we
are in a conflict that is as old and as enduring as our country. And it comes down to racial attitudes, for
that is what has blemished our history from our beginnings through 241 years
right up until this very moment in time.
Whether we like it or not, our progress and our underlying values; our
victories and our feats of strength and bravery do not erase our failures and
our flaws, or the facts of history.
We have
still within our systems and our institutions a built-in discrimination against
certain groups and certain beliefs. And
we not only maintain those institutional and moral flaws, we are, as a nation,
being led down a road that embraces discrimination, unequal justice, lack of
equal opportunity, and built-in restrictions for those who are of different
ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds, or sexual orientation; plus those
with physical or mental limitations or characteristics that we consider ‘not normal’
or ‘unacceptable.’ Like it or not, we
are still a nation full of biases, discriminatory attitudes, and values, even
hatreds, that belong to a slave-owning mentality. And Donald Trump is leading us to “make
American great again by using the bully pulpit (and his Twitter Tweets) to
support and characterize neo-fascists, white supremacists, and neo-Nazis as
“good people” and as part of his ‘base.’
We have made
progress in certain areas, but we are finding, under Trump, that we have
reverted to a neo-fascist, white supremacist, nationalistic fervor and fever
that has been kept underground for some time. You may be, as I was, shocked to
learn that the Southern Poverty Law Center has identified more than 915 groups
classified as ‘hate groups’ in the United States, and this number is growing. We
are also finding that discrimination is still evident in our systems and
institutions where extremists are not necessarily present, but where ordinary
white folk and others keep alive in our culture and its organizations and
institutions -- by their denial, their apathy and their aversion to change --
the very discriminatory rules and attitudes that we think we are overcoming
(like allowing failing schools in inner cities). We aren’t, we haven’t, but we
must.
There is a
deep divide in this country about race, immigration and justice (as there has
always been) between people of color and those classified as “white.” That divide has manifested itself in many
ways, but began its awful journey with the institution of slavery under which we
developed concepts that have never left us, such as:
§ Superiority of one race (white) over
other races (mainly dark-skinned)
§ The smug and subtle concept that black
and brown are colors associated with dirt, unworthiness (blackballed,
black-listed, black-hearted), ignorance, animalistic nature, and that such
black people will never progress beyond a certain level (welfare queens).
§ The equally subtle constuct that darkness bespeaks a criminal nature;
white supremacists declare that these are people who are lawless, who will
commit crimes as part of their predatory, animalistic nature. And our criminal justice system backs that up
with harassment, violent handling of demonstrators of color, unjustified killing
of black or brown persons who threaten the person or authority of police, and
the unequal treatment received in the courts where African American men are
sentenced far more severely than their white counterparts, often for the same
crime.
§ Central to white supremacists is the
axiom that black and brown people are less than full persons or citizens and
they should be denied the vote whenever and wherever possible, or their votes
should be minimized by gerrymandering them into small districts that have
little clout anywhere
§ The preservation of symbols of
oppression that keep “history” alive: from guns to the confederate flag, to
statues of generals on horseback to the arousal caused by the singing of “Dixie”
– some are protesting their existence
and want then taken down; others are fighting to keep them displayed somewhere
so that Southern history is preserved. But “the history” lives on in the
removal of the confederate flag from the statehouse by Governor Nikki Haley of
South Carolina touted as something that might bind-up the wounds of the past,
while ignoring all the statistics that showed clearly that state’s neglect of
African Americans in almost every meaningful category of life (see my Blog
titled: “Flag Removed: One More Detour?” posted on 7/12/2015).
Well, I’m
all for preserving history, but not if that history leaves out a slew of
basics, like:
§ the Civil War was fought over
maintaining slavery of Africans who were bought and sold at market-places; or,
that
§ the economy of the South was built on
the backs of those slaves who experienced horrendously de-humanizing
conditions, like having their families split apart, being refused an education,
being whipped for the slightest ‘offense,’ slave women being used as
concubines, men being made into “boys”, and finally, the listing of slaves as
3/5’s of a person so they could be counted in the U.S. census without being
declared citizens.
§ after the Emancipation Proclamation
was put into effect, the growth of Jim Crow laws did everything possible to
keep former slaves from becoming full citizens who could vote, own property,
attend good schools. Those freedmen
could easily get lynched for whatever the white establishment declared to be an
offense against (their) society and their Jim Crow laws (many of which were
unwritten but nonetheless ‘enforced’ by the KKK and others).
So, let us
come back to where we started: the denunciation of the protests of NFL Players ‘taking
a knee’ during the national anthem and pledge of allegiance to the flag. Trump wants them fired for showing such
disrespect to those symbols. And so do
others, according to some recent polls.
I come down
on a side that we hear little about. I
want the players, and all the rest of us to be able to protest injustice and
bigotry, an over-abundance of violence, the killing of innocent people and the
denigration of democratic values and principles such as free speech and freedom
of the press, without threats of reprisal.
I personally want the right to express grievances in peaceful
demonstrations but still have the support of others for the citizenship,
patriotism and personhood of those who are protesting in the spirit of our
American Revolution and our Constitution.
In other
words, let us give up the absurdity that there is only one way to react patriotically
to the facts of our history, and to our behavior as a nation and as a
community. Like so many of our Founding
Fathers, I want the choice and the right to be a revolutionary, a protestor of
the loss of primacy of law replaced by the whims of leaders who worship power
and control (otherwise known as ‘Law & Order”), and the cult of ‘might
makes right’. I am not in favor of making idols out of flags, statuary and symbols. The NFL players are not disrespecting the flag or the anthem; they are expressing a grievance and displeasure with the failure of this administration (and others of the past) to address inequality, lack of equal opportunity, police violence and the patent injustices of the justice system. They believe that ‘Black Lives Matter’ and that those lives should not be allowed to be snuffed out or devastated by police or by ordinary citizens who keep covert rules and norms alive in our institutions that extend all the way back to slavery.
Kneeling is
a sign of respect. The player protest grows
out of a respect for their brothers and sisters, and mothers and fathers, who
have had their lives made less than whole by people who still pledge their
allegiance to follow that “partly human” - ‘3/5’s of a person’ – phrase in the
Constitution as applied to slaves of the past and to people of color in the present. Player
protests (and many others) are not against the flag and its pledge of
allegiance, or about the national anthem.
It is about the 240+ years of bigotry and racism that has plagued our
nation’s character and behavior. It is about lives
that matter but that have been, and are still being, singled-out for disruption
and punishment beyond the norm for the white establishment.
Let us at
least get it straight that protests are not against inanimate objects; they are
against human entities that ignore, challenge and deny the basic rights of a
group of citizens simply because they are not of European ancestry. It is a protest against government that
consciously rewards rich white people, and that consciously and concurrently
denies travel to this country from Muslim countries, bans trans-gender people
from the armed forces, retracts hundreds of regulations that protect citizens
(such as young women on college campuses), leaving them with no avenues of
appeal. It is about the violence
displayed by neo-Nazis and white supremacists against peaceful protestors in
Charlottesville; it is all about the delay in bringing to justice the young
white male who drove his car into that city’s crowd of protestors killing a
young woman. It is about not just the
attempted repeal of Obamacare, but about the attempt to wipe away coverage for millions
of people who now have health care under Obamacare but will be without it under
any brand of ‘Trumpcare', because the Republican Party is all about radical Right-wing ideology and not about healthcare for poor people.
This protest is mainly
about unequal and destructive treatment of people of color. Trump talks a good
game, but his actions speak louder than words:
like not going to Puerto Rico until weeks after the devastation there;
like not calling for immediate justice for the Nazi executioner driving that
death car in Charlottesville; like not condemning the perpetrators of violence
in other cities and suburbs like Ferguson and East St. Louis; instead always
coming down on the side of law and order which means on the side of whites
while condemning the criminal character of the inner cities and of certain
immigrants (Mexicans for one).
The
destructive treatment goes on and on, with little done about any of it, except
to excuse those who spend their time promoting such bias and
discrimination. Those that kill innocent
black men (and women) keep getting away with those killings, and Donald Trump
sits idly by ready to tweet something about the NFL player protest which he may
have purposefully planned to divert public attention and anger over his stance
on DACA, and his ‘threats’ to North Korea.
He Tweets, but does not act to overcome the deaths and denigration of people
of color.
The player
protest is also one of sorrow that there are still many people of color who
have given up on voting because they cannot see what good it will do to keep
electing people who will not do what needs to be done; to vote for people who
do not care about them.
The protests
are against representatives of the people, not against inanimate objects that
in themselves have no power to do anything but be symbols. If Trump and his minions want citizens to
respect the flag, the pledge, the anthem and our Constitution, then he and his
administration, including Congress, must take actions that correct the overt
wrongs, violence and inequities, the overt discriminatory acts and behaviors, as
well as the covert acts of restriction, denigration and denial that exist
within our institutions. Let us insist
that legislators and administrators ‘take a knee’ to reclaim and rejuvenate
their oaths of office to protect all
the People (including protestors) and to secure the People's Welfare, with equal
justice for all as our patriotic Mission.
