Sports | Inside Track:
Does politics have a place in sports?
The protests incited by Colin Kaepernick in the US showed some small but interesting parallels in the PH sports and political stage.
AMERICAN FOOTBALL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, made U.S. sports headlines for making a clear and public stand against racism.
But it wasn’t a tweet or something he told the press in an interview. In a National Football League (NFL) preseason game in September, Kaepernick drew attention as he makes a statement by refusing to stand and later on dropping down to his knees as the U.S. national anthem was played. (Traditionally, everyone including the athletes stand in this part before every game.)
Asked later by an NFL reporter, Kaepernick said, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
Kaepernick, of part African-American descent, protested the racial injustice and police brutality that are still rampant in present-day America. The protest only gained more traction as more black men continued to be killed by the police. The most high-profile one at the time was the killing of an unarmed black man in Oklahoma by a police officer, with a footage of the shooting released to the public.
Kaepernick’s “national anthem protest,” as it has been dubbed, has since sparked a national movement within the American sports community. It drew hard criticism from those who didn’t think sports and politics should mix, and started more debates not only on institutional racism but also on the relationship between sports and patriotism.
IN THE PHILIPPINES, something a little similar happened.
It might have flown over your radar, especially if you don’t really follow collegiate sports. But it didn’t escape the national headlines when the two UAAP rivals, Ateneo de Manila University and De La Salle University made a special request to their community and to anyone coming to their first ever match in the 79th season of the University Athletics Association of the Philippines (UAAP) men’s basketball at the MOA Arena.
On our own backyard are also polarizing and hot water conversation on political issues such as the deadly “war on drugs” waged by the new administration and the burial of a dictator in Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Both the Ateneo and La Salle invited members of their community to take a stand and wear black garments and accessories on the traditional blue and green affair. It was to “express solidarity with victims of human rights violations and with all others struggling to uphold human rights in the country,” said the memorandum of Ateneo university president, Ramon T. Villarin, SJ.
The call drew mixed reactions, evident in the “Black Sunday” game (as it was nicknamed) on October 2, where some fans still chose to wear their school colors. The Ateneo Blue Eagles, however, wore black shirts during warmups.
Predictably, the symbolic gesture in protest of extrajudicial and vigilante killings drew the ire of the supporters of the current administration who saw it as a partisan stunt, as well as those who believed Philippine politics shouldn’t be brought into the world of collegiate sports.
SPORTS AND POLITICS don’t mix, they said. Or do they?
History has another thing to say about it. Sports and politics already have a long entangled history. And Kaepernick is not the first sportsman to use it as a medium or platform to take a stand or speak out about political issues of their generation.
Muhammad Ali, the iconic American boxer who took a stance against the Vietnam War by refusing to enlist in the late 1960s, is one in the long list of sports activists and protesters. This had cost him his boxing license barring him from the sport and effectively ending his career.
The status and influence sports give to professional athletes certainly empowers them to take a stand. In 2014, NBA stars, Lebron James, Kyrie Irving, Jarret Jack and Kevin Garnett were seen sporting black shirts during warmups that say “I Can’t Breathe.” This is to protest the killing of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man choked to death by a police officer, and whose last words were “I can’t breathe.”
In Russia, at the height of a high tension moment for gay rights because of their anti-gay propaganda law, came a political statement through a kiss by runners Kseniya Ryzhova and Yulia Guschina at the finish line of the 4x400 meter relay at the World Athletics Championships in Moscow.
Just recently, at the Rio Olympics, Ethiopian marathoner, Fiyesa Lilesa crossed his arms at the finish line as a protest gesture against his country’s violent crackdown on political dissent.
Kaepernick has inspired a lot of other players to embrace the protest not just within the NFL but also other other professional sports leagues, even at the collegiate and high school level sports. According to ThinkProgress, a blog monitoring the protests closely, eight weeks since Kaepernick started his protest, there have been 13 NFL teams, 9 NBA teams, 14 WNBA players, 52 high schools, 35 colleges, even a middle school, and two youth football teams, who joined the national anthem protests.
But apart from the movement that is growing bigger and showing no signs of slowing down, it also incited a polarized conversation about activism in sports, patriotism, and racial discrimination. A Republican congressman hit the quarterback’s activism as “undermining patriotism” and is “sympathetic to ISIS,” while an NFL executive called him a traitor, TIME reported on their cover story on the protests. A former NFL quarterback, Trent Dilfer, called Kaepernick’s protest “irresponsible” because “people aren’t tuning in to us to hear about what we feel about all these social issues.”
Dilfer said he has respect for what he’s doing, and the passion and the burden of the issue for him, but he does not respect that “he [Kaepernick] put himself and his stance above the team.”
U.S. president, Barrack Obama, at a news conference said, “I think he cares about some real, legitimate issues that have to be talked about. And if nothing else, what he’s done is he’s generated more conversation around some topics that need to be talked about. Sometimes it’s messy, but it’s the way democracy works.”
These are just a few of the sentiments about Kaepernick’s movement. The outrage it drew, however, seem to have led more athletes to step up. NBA players like LeBron James and Stephen Curry backed Kaepernick. James said, “I’m all in favor of anyone, athlete or non-athlete, being able to express what they believe in a peaceful manner and that’s exactly what Colin Kaepernick is doing and I respect that.” Curry thought Kaepernick took “a bold step to continue the conversation and make it more poignant.” The NBA, however, has a league rule requiring players to stand during the anthem, a rule which didn’t stop other players in the NBA when they modified the protest stance through raising their fists or locking their arms.
“I thought a lot about it, read a lot about it and just felt, how can I not kneel too? I know what it’s like to look at the flag and not have all your rights,” Megan Rapinoe, an openly gay member of the U.S. women’s soccer team told TIME magazine, taking the protest to the international stage in a Sept. 15 match against Thailand.
AMERICAN football is not particularly as big as NBA is in the Philippines, but the “Black Sunday,” while not as successful as “The Kaepernick Effect” showed some small but interesting parallels in our own sports and political stage.
The growing body count of the government’s crackdown on illegal drugs and the conversation about upholding human rights or condoning summary executions has led two of our biggest and prominent universities to take a stand, by inviting its members to wear black during a well-publicized game.
An editorial by Journal Online, called out the whole thing. “So they turn sports, or a basketball game between two great rivals for that matter, into a convenient venue to make a purely political statement. Pray tell me, sports and politics mix?”
Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) commissioner, Charles Raymond Maxey, was quoted in the editorial saying “sports and politics don’t mix” and that it was a “victory for sports,” in reaction to the protest.
The gesture, according to Ateneo president Villarin, is a matter of taking a moral stand on the human rights issues teeming in our country, he told The Guidon, ADMU’s student publication. “Here, we are doing this as a gesture of concern for the culture of violence that we are seeing. I am concerned about the impact on this on the young people, the sense of right and wrong, and this is something that we have to make a stand on.” According to the Guidon report, Villarin is also in talks with other UAAP schools regarding the matter and that they are open to extend the movement to the entire UAAP community.
An Ateneo student who went to the game wearing black thought it wasn’t about politics at all. “It’s more of me showing unity with the different issues in our country right now, such as extrajudicial killings. It’s about basic human values.”
A netizen, on a Facebook post had this to say: “Wear the flag colors instead. We are already so divided as a country. Now even in sports, which in essence aims to promote camaraderie and solidarity, we still promote division.”
The UAAP commissioner, Atty. Rebo Saguisag saw no problems with Black Sunday. It was not a “UAAP thing, but a school thing,” he said in an ABS-CBN interview ahead of the game. “If it’s an invitation, you’re not forced to do it. You’re free to invite, and those who are invited are also free whether to accept or decline the invitation.”
“It’s a thin line between saying you keep politics out, but at the same time, the athletes and those involved in the UAAP, they can be a medium, a powerful medium to express,” he added.
Only the Ateneo players wore black during the game. And while this hasn’t yet incited a large chain reaction within the Philippine sports community, it shows one thing, the conversation it sparked means it has potential to reach beyond promoting camaraderie or entertainment or a national pasttime.
Filipinos are big sports aficionados. Its reach and influence might just make it another effective platform for activism and advancing important social causes, especially in a highly-charged political climate the Philippines is currently muddling through. ■ Aquinian Herald
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