Politicizing Sports is a Bad Idea
In 2016, following a spate of police violence against black men, Colin Kaepernick, the backup quarterback of the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers, started kneeling during the national anthem before games. When asked for his reasons, 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. 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.”
Essentially, he could not celebrate a country in which police commit unjust violence against racial minorities.
Although Kaepernick opted out of his contract after the season and was out of the league in 2017, the protest caught fire among other players, who also started kneeling during the anthem. Soon, so many players were kneeling that President Trump felt compelled to publicly insult most of them, which caused even more kneeling among NFL players united by anti-Trump feelings.
This is not good business for the NFL, whose fan base is disproportionately conservatives and military veterans, who were especially offended by the players’ lack of patriotism. NFL viewership has dropped at least 10%, and even prominent NFL sponsors, like Papa John’s, saw declining revenue due to their association with the NFL. When the NFL owners convened their annual meeting this summer, they agreed on the need to limit the protests in order to protect their business. For the 2018 season, players would be required to stand for the playing of The Star Spangled Banner. With the new rule, many people around the league hoped the anthem issue would fade.
These hopes have been smashed, however. Not only was the new rule rescinded on the first day of the NFL season, but Nike, the $130 billion company which also makes all the uniforms the players wear on the field, used opening weekend to air a new shoe advertisement featuring Colin Kaepernick. The advertisement sports a montage of inspiring athletes, including video of LeBron James opening a school and one-handed Shaquem Griffen playing for the Seahawks. It ends with Kaepernick speaking into the camera: “Just do it, even if you have to sacrifice everything.”
Whether or not this ad campaign — and a very public decision to side with the anthem protests — turns out well for Nike, it’s worth revisiting the protest.
The protest makes a clear statement: the purpose of playing the Star Bangled Banner is to celebrate the U.S. of A. Kaepernick says he can’t celebrate the U.S. due to racial violence by police. That isn’t the same as not showing respect for a flag or anthem, just as forgetting to wear your wedding ring is different from defiantly taking the ring off after a fight with your spouse. Whatever you think of the symbolism of the national anthem, Kaepernick is reflecting that symbolism to make his protest: the U.S. should not be celebrated. This is a strong indictment of the country. And it’s a terrible way to protest.
The protest has almost no connection its object. There’s no obvious nexus that makes the Star Spangled Banner a symbol of anything more specific than the U.S. as a whole — certainly not police brutality. Kaepernick isn’t even protesting the right government. The national anthem represents a national government that employs almost no police — state cops have been doing most of the damage. And the protest is confusing in the scope of its claims. Kaepernick’s behavior suggests police brutality is so bad that he can’t respect symbols of the U.S., but not so bad that he can’t sell Nikes.
This protest is also arbitrary. Unlike other successful protests, Kaepernick isn’t depriving anyone of his money or time. He is only annoying: the threat of the “protest” is that if we don’t change, he will continue insulting us. It seems like his protest strategy is just to confuse and bother people while talking about social justice. In relation to police brutality, it makes as much sense to kneel during a song as it does to manspread on the 5 train.
This lack of focus and sympathy makes Kaepernick’s protest a failure. ESPN seems to be friendly to him, but in recent articles about Kaepernick, ESPN only referred to his protest over “social justice issues.” Whatever those are (presumably they don’t include “believe the woman”). But those tepid and generic statements by Kaepernick supporters are among the good reactions to his protest. Many people have been infuriated instead. Kaepernick says he’s protesting police brutality, but by choosing a national symbol, he indicts the nation and opposes formal but common expressions of patriotism to anti-racism. His protest implies that anyone who thinks the U.S. might be worth celebrating is thereby complicit in the worst of the nation’s injustices. If you’re not kneeling, you’re racist.
Whatever Kaepernick thought he was doing initially, the national conversation is now about him, not his protest. Kaepernick started a public movement about Colin Kaepernick, not about the police brutality issues he was apparently trying to protest. And he won’t be going away. There’s no way to appease Kaepernick — a country that gets no credit for ending slavery and segregation won’t be any more ennobled by ending unjustified police shootings, and anyway Kaepernick has already expanded beyond police misconduct to globalized oppression. But without a clearer agenda and a protest more clearly connected to its subject matter, all we’re left with is a cynical rich guy with no ideas insulting as racists the mass of poorer people who pay his salary.
A lot of people have recently noted that professional athletes have a “voice” that they should use to express their politics. But this “voice” only exists because prior generations of celebrity did not speak about politics so much. Athletes have a “voice” because people like them, but people like athletes largely because athletes don’t speak about politics. Saying that athletes have an opportunity to use their voice to discuss contentious political issues is like saying that someone who never arrives late to work has an opportunity sleep in without consequences. It will only remain true as long as the opportunity is not taken. Having a voice doesn’t make one capable of making a useful political statement, anymore than having a shirt allows one to make an admirable fashion statement. In this way, Kaepernick’s political protest is a lot like President Obama’s tan suit — an ambitious but misguided failure by someone whose talents lie elsewhere.
I am not offended by anyone who boycotts the national anthem. I wouldn’t care if I never heard the song again, and I’ve never understood why it had to be played before every sporting event (and almost nowhere else). I am, however, offended by this protest, which tells me, at the exact moment I am paying to watch the contest, that I am a racist for disagreeing with the political expressions of the mostly minority high-school graduates who have become millionaires in this terrible racist country.
As I am always eager to admit, though, almost no one needs to care about me being offended. And I will never make the argument that I have some individual right to enjoy sports without being exposed to, let alone offended by, the political expression of the athletes. But the fact is, I am offended. The anthem protests have been a great airing of grievances — but mostly by the players, at the mostly less fortunate people who watch them and cheer for them and ultimately pay their salaries.
I can’t watch these athletes, as I have many times in the past, without remembering that they think I am racist — they really don’t like me. And that simply makes the game less enjoyable, since it is almost impossible to invest yourself in the outcome of a contest where all the participants agree that you are terrible.
The Progressive argument is that politics take precedence over everything else; that part of my white-cisheteropatriarchal privilege has been an undeserved experience of sports untainted by social justice. Everything must be represented by every thing, and they don’t regret my discomfort when harsh reality intrudes on my tv time. And to an extent, I agree. Justice is more important than sports and the outcomes of human lives matter far more than the outcomes of games. But that’s also why I watch sports, as an escape from the headier concerns of social justice and politics. We already have sports and politics — attempting to join them only obliterates sports. And it’s worth noting what we are throwing away as we conscript sports into a wider political theater.
Like many other people, sports have been a refuge for me— a way to connect with people when connecting in any other way may might have been impossible. Regardless of age, race, wealth, zip code, education — gender, not so much — we all watch the same dudes in the same stupid contests and we can relate to each other through that shared experience and interest. In this way, sports have been a consistent source of community in my life: from preschool, when my dad first taught me to memorize the Chicago Bulls’ starting lineup — “from North Carolina, at guard, six foot six…” — to high school, skipping class to watch the Champion’s League Final at Samarth’s house; from freshman year of college, when Devin Hester’s kickoff return touchdown to open the Super Bowl had me and my friends jumping up and down on our futon like Tom Cruise, to countless conversations, stories, excursions and arguments with friends, fellow students and co-workers, and even strangers.
And I know — and I have known, the whole time — that sports are stupid: they do not improve us, and absolutely nothing depends on the outcomes. We are watching millionaires with incredible bodies compete at arbitrary contests. We spectators can imagine ourselves as part of the story in order to make the events more meaningful to us–through regional pride and rivalries, history and records, and emotional commitments to players and teams–but these are narrative tricks that help conceal, or at least downplay, the reality that we’re usually just watching millionaires have fun, and that’s fun for us.
The flip side of sports enjoyment — the consequence-free fun— is that if it’s not enjoyable, there’s no reason to watch. Actually, there are a lot of reasons not to watch, and to read a book or go for a run and call your mom instead of spending hours having “fun” watching sports. Maintaining the illusion that sports are valuable is difficult already and it becomes nearly impossible when the athletes tell us, in spite of their wealth and celebrity, that we are racist, that the athletes don’t like us, that we should solve complicated social issues for them so they can continue to live richer and more celebrated lives than ours.
I don’t need to watch the NFL for aggressive and inarticulate expressions of political alignment — I have Facebook for that. And exactly like Facebook, if the NFL stops being enjoyable — because every time I turn it on, the participants are reminding me that I’m a bad person — it will be easy to walk away. I’ll be fine; possibly even improved. And for all I know, social justice issues are more important than sports, and I deserve to have awareness of those issues ruin sports. But at the next family gathering, work meeting, or MetroNorth train ride, I will sit across from someone I don’t know very well, or at all, and we won’t talk about sports. Instead, to quote from a song only slightly less annoying than the Star Spangled Banner, we will “look at each other / wondering what the other is thinking / but we never say a thing / and these crimes between us grow deeper.”
