The NFL Opener, the Black National Anthem, and Generation Bootlicker
Last night, the NFL season opened amid racial turmoil and a global pandemic. Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri will be one of only two stadiums to allow fans to attend games this season. And, in response to the #BlackLivesMatter momentum from the recent high-profile cases of police brutality in this country, the NFL has decided to play the “Black National Anthem” before every game. “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was written by noted anti-lynching advocate, James Weldon Johnson and stands in stark contrast to the Star-Spangled Banner, which was written by a slave owner and includes two verses about capturing and murdering runaway slaves.
When the Black National Anthem was played last night, a noisy contingent of fans at Arrowhead Stadium booed. These fans later booed the moment of unity between the Chiefs and the Texans. The fans that booed had likely never heard Lift Every Voice and Sing before; or had no idea the meaning or impact the song has in the Black community; or had no idea that the National Anthem they so proudly stand for and demand that every athlete stand for is partly about the capture and murder of runaway slaves. If they did have an idea, they are more insidious than I gave them credit for.
What they were booing was a song and movement they view as anti-American because it seeks (racial) progress. These fans demand blind allegiance to the status quo; blind allegiance to the flag, blind allegiance to the military (especially on the anniversary of 9–11), and blind allegiance to the police and other law enforcement. Anything less is “anti-American.” These fans are bootlickers.
Bootlickers have been buoyed by a President who recently ended diversity training for federal agencies because of “divisive, anti-American propaganda” that focuses on race theory and white privilege. In other words, anyone who questions the racial equality in this country is un-American. This false dichotomy makes a nuanced concept easy to grasp for the bootlicker. This move was four years in the making-Generation Bootlicker was born in 2016 when Colin Kaepernick had the audacity to protest police brutality during the playing of the Star-Spangled Banner before NFL games.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. 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…” -Colin Kaepernick, August 26, 2016
In August 2016, Colin Kaepernick began silently protesting police brutality by, at first, sitting, and, eventually, kneeling during the national anthem. The response from many was a mix of anger, resentment, and vitriol. Donald Trump used Kaepernick’s protest as a dog-whistle during the Republican National Convention in 2016. The dog-whistle from Trump is even louder now as we approach the 2020 election.
Another response to Kaepernick was the increased visibility and fervency of the countermovement, Blue Lives Matter. Blue Lives Matter was spawned in 2014 as a response to what the creators believed was an anti-police sentiment from the media and the Black Lives Matter movement. Confidence in the police had reached a 20 year low in 2015. After Kaepernick’s protest, for some reason, confidence in the police surged, especially among white Americans.
Police officer is consistently ranked at the top of polls for the most respected professions in the country. Police officer garners nearly as much respect as doctor, lawyer, and engineer in this country. However, one profession out of the four is not like the other. Becoming a doctor, lawyer, or engineer requires not only a four year undergraduate degree, but, also an entrance exam into graduate school, years of graduate school study, and placement exams after graduate school. Continuing education is also required to maintain active status in the profession.
Because of these extensive educational requirements, the respect garnered by these professions makes intuitive sense. These people have committed years of their lives to study one subject and have passed rigorous testing requirements to become licensed. We know for sure that a licensed doctor, lawyer, or engineer has been thoroughly trained in their field.
Meanwhile, most police academies in the country take between 3 to 6 months to complete. While having a college degree improves one’s chances of becoming a police officer, it is not a requirement, despite the fact that police officers with college degrees are less likely to use force or discharge their gun while on duty. The vast majority of police officers in this country do not have a college degree. In 2015, President Obama, through a task force on 21st Century policing, identified college education for police officers as a way to reduce crime and improve relations between police and the communities they serve. Furthermore, most police departments do not have mandatory mental health training or mandatory implicit bias training.
So, if someone tells you they are police officer, you are well within reason to question the breadth of their training. Why then do 76 percent of Americans have “great respect” for the police? Why does that number go up to 80 percent when we look just at white Americans? If it isn’t a common sense understanding of the extensive training required to become a police officer, then what it is it that gives the vast majority of people in this country a knee-jerk reaction of respect for a police officer and demand that their fellow citizens do the same?
Is it because the job is dangerous? A recent op-ed stated that “Law enforcement officials deserve to be respected for the dangerous jobs they do.” However, police officer is not even in the top ten of most dangerous jobs in the country. And in fact, in 2007, one of the last years police deaths topped 200, only 25 percent of those deaths came at the hands of a criminal. Furthermore a bootlicker might be surprised to learn that “toddlers are killed by guns more often than on-duty police officers are.” (Nicholas Kristof, 2015) “In fact, during most years from the 1990s until today, the number of officer deaths has been roughly the same as 100 years ago, when there were far fewer officers.” (Will Doran, Atlanta Journal Constitution, 2017). Thus, being a police officer has never been safer than it is today.
Is it because police officers “protect” the community from violence? Research has shown that police officers actually have an undetermined effect on the violent crime rate. A recent study cited by the New York Times may shed some light on whether the police actually keep us safe from violent crime. The study showed that only 4 percent of police time was spent on responding to violent crime. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/19/upshot/unrest-police-time-violent-crime.html. Most of a police officer’s time is spent responding to nonviolent calls, traffic, and property crime. Thus, police spend very little time even responding to violent crime, let alone preventing violent crime.
So, why then have we been entrenched in Generation Bootlicker? Why do so many Americans view video of heinous acts by police and choose to justify their actions?
A landmark study published in January 2020 found that many Americans’ views of the police were shaped primarily from scripted television shows, like Law and Order. And more specifically, Generation Bootlicker’s response to the murder of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake are shaped by television. Incredibly, a recent Law and Order promo “featured [a] voiceover, accompanied by multiple scenes of fans’ favorite cops drawing their weapons, breaking down doors and roughing people up: To enforce the law, sometimes you need a little…disorder.” https://hollywood.colorofchange.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Normalizing-Injustice_Abridged-1.pdf
These shows, save for a few, like The Wire, depict cops as heroes and the criminal justice system working fairly and justly. This frames viewers’ opinions of the police and leads many viewers to be skeptical of those who question the fairness of police officers’ actions. So, television is one of the main culprits for the creation of Generation Bootlicker. Television likely played a role in Kyle Rittenhouse wanting to become a police officer.
The bootlickers love to dismiss police brutality as a few bad apples. But, because police officers are rarely held accountable for their deadly mistakes, you’ll have to forgive certain segments of the population for not reflexively “respecting” and trusting police officers. And unless you want to spend your life as a bootlicker, perhaps now is the time to listen to those who have been wronged by the police.
