Nike, Kaepernick and America’s culture wars

Jemine Amotsuka
Sep 4, 2018 · 6 min read

Yesterday, Nike revealed Colin Kaepernick, arguably America’s most controversial figure, as the face of the 30th Anniversary of their “Just Do It” campaign. Like an unrelenting timeloop of the same narrative scene, but with slightly different characters, the well choreographed drama of America’s social tensions ensued. Celebration and commemorative posts from Kaepernick supporters, and outrage and temper tantrums from his detractors flooded social media. On second thought, I take back the metaphor of a timeloop. A timeloop is too inert. What started yesterday and will continue to rage over the next few days is another assault wave in the culture wars that is ravaging America’s social fabric. In this round, several points clearly have been won by the progressive/racial justice camp with an endorsement from the world’s most recognizable clothing brand. The opposing camp of course, recognizes this as a major blow to its legitimacy.

I for one, am getting exhausted by the never ending culture wars that we all seem to be trapped in. Everything seems so high stakes these days. To be clear, this isn’t some sort of wishful thinking for a simpler world or easier times. I’m not that naive. However, I do wish for a world where energy was expended on issues in proportion to their consequence. In these culture wars, every single confrontation is worth depleting the ranks and staging a full frontal assault for. I’m exhausted. Exhausted enough that I’ll have write more on that topic another day. I want to write about something else.

I want to explore the inner dynamics of this culture war. Especially the psychology of the anti-Kaepernick team who would rather convince us that they’re instead pro-veteran and pro-flag. A poll from 2016 showed that the demographics of this camp is overwhelmingly white and older. Two years later, I’m certain that camp is whiter and older.

Why does Nike’s endorsement of Kaepernick feel like an attack on them? Are they just blatant racists like they’re often characterized? If I had to answer that question it would be yes and no. Yes, in that there is clearly a racialized nature to this conflict. No, because there is nothing blatant about it. It’s wound up in a complex layers of psychic emotion, social norms and cultural attitudes.

When you boil down all the outrage, virtue signaling and hyper-patriotism, I believe you’ll discover that this population is most fundamentally angry because it is losing the cultural capital it has had for centuries.

By cultural capital I mean,

  • they’re used to their sensibilities being catered to by major brands
  • commercials and billboards primarily featured people that looked like them, wore their hair like them, dressed like them etc.
  • all the movies that mattered had characters that reflected them with stories that mirrored their experiences/fantasies.
  • the leadership of the country had mostly been held by people that looked like them.
  • culture influencers, celebrities had almost always looked like them, or at least been required to embody some degree of respectability politics.

All of this functioned together to create a baseline of comfortability, visibility, belonging and group self-esteem. This baseline of white centrality in a country of diverse ethnicities is what I refer to as the latent version of white supremacy. It’s the final evolutionary phase of white supremacy. When it no longer has to be overtly espoused or violently enforced but rather, it has successfully woven its essence into the milieu as normative. The Anti-Kaep camp were born into and socialized into this milieu.

Over the last two decades, a range of coinciding shifts politically, socially, demographically, technologically have all created triggered changes that have allowed that baseline to be incessantly assaulted and rapidly transformed. There are a range of reasons for these shifts but a few are

  • The legislative wins of the civil rights era are yielding dividends and producing a generation of uniquely empowered minorities. These minorities do not have the same trauma as their parents, nor do they submit as voluntarily to respectability politics.
  • the demographics of the country is shifting. Plenty has been written on that point. Google it
  • gatekeeper institutions that were mediators and arbiters of public discourse (which all centered whiteness) have been weakened by the internet. News channels reporting on day old viral videos already seen by millions is an example of this.
  • The increasing racial integration of American society is taking its course and bringing with it new conflict that previously didn’t exist.

All this seemed to have kicked into high gear over the past decade. It’s happening fast because everything happens fast these days. It’s the pace of the age. Directing one’s sympathy towards the white demographic that sincerely feels overwhelmed by how much their world is changing, feels like having to trivialize the generations of people of color that are harmed by several centuries of invisibility, systemic oppression and marginalization. Speed is relative and what might seem too fast for one group is several generations late for another. I’m reminded of James Baldwin’s words in response to the notion that progress has to take time—

I was born here almost sixty years ago. I’m not going to live another sixty years. You always told me it takes time. It has taken my father’s time, my mother’s time. My uncle’s time. My brother’s and sister’s time. My niece’s and my nephew’s time. How much time do you want for your…’progress’?”

I’m going all through this to say.

A portion of white America feels like it is being threatened and disempowered. They are not wrong. Empowerment is relative. While this “disempowerment” is a loss of power that shouldn’t have existed to begin with, to the one who is losing the power, it still feels like a loss. Dismissively categorizing all the emotions and reactions connected to this experience as “blatant racism” is a little too simplistic. This doesn’t at all negate real instances of racial violence, antagonism and oppression that happens frequently. In the reverse, claiming that there isn’t a hint of racial anxiety and animosity influencing the politics and social behavior of whites as an aggregate is outright ludicrous. It seems to me that both sides of the culture wars seem to have conceded that only simplistic narratives about self and other can be useful, resulting in all confrontations being framed by sharp binaries. We are noble patriots, they are leftist globalists. We are socially conscious, compassionate human beings, they are heartless racists with no conscience.

I understand the temptation to do this. Simplicity is expedient and the truth isn’t, because its far too complicated. Simplicity makes for powerful rhetoric, but it ultimately makes us weaker because we construct a reality that isn’t based on truth. It takes courage to eschew simplicity for truth. It requires one to be willing to lose some battles because it is convinced that truth always wins the war. The high altitude arena where America’s culture wars are currently staged has made it almost impossible to be truthful. The stakes are perfection or annihilation. Every misstep or nuanced perspective immediately has you tumbling into range of defining labels — anti-American, racist, socialist, globalist, extremist, fascist, misogynist, cuck, marxist, homophobic, to name just a few. Ironically enough, the very quote that captions Nike’s latest campaign is a reflection of this “all or nothing” simplification that only perpetuates and escalates conflict.

Realistically speaking, the Left is bound to win the culture wars. It has better PR and its dishonesty seems a little more palatable than its opponents. That’s not even considering the fact that it is made up of a much younger base so it’s bound to outlive its opponents.

The question I am left with however, is whether the future sociopolitical climate that is being fought for, and will eventually be ushered in, is overall any more liberating or promising than what is currently being dismantled. Solidarity is easily fostered when people have a common enemy. But what happens when that common enemy is vanquished and the weapons and habits of war are no longer of needed? How does a group of rebels, outcasts and underdogs foster and maintain solidarity within its diversity?

If human history is any indication — after the revolution, comes civil war. How do we avoid that?

I have just two ideas for now.

Value truth over simplicity.
Reject “all or nothing” ideologies.

Recovering Idiot. Learning to love Jesus. Learning to love people. I write from the intersections of being black/Nigerian/immigrant/male/christian/afrofuturist

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