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Football and Racial Fault Lines
According to an account my son came across a while ago: “Football is one of the most powerful institutions in American society. It is so powerful that it claimed an entire day of the week. It said, ‘This day is ours. We own it.’ Not only did football take a day of the week, but the previous owner was God.”
Though a failed fan myself (no less a figure than Jack Kemp advised me to give up trying to master the rules), I am an American, and accordingly can hardly miss the fact that football is one of most unifying aspects of American culture. The games have become the one thing that most Americans, especially men, can comfortably discuss. No matter what region of the country you’re visiting, you are bound to hear men who find themselves thrown together asking “Did you see the game?” Animated analysis, crowing, and/or cringing follows. Black and white, immigrant and native born, men and (mysteriously) women, adults and children, liberals and conservatives – huge swaths of the country speak the same idiom and share the experience of football. Super Bowl Sunday is close to a national sacrament.
You think it’s easy to maintain national cohesion? It isn’t. That’s why demagogues since time began conjure external enemies and scapegoat minorities — which is not to say that enemies are always imaginary. In our time, the things that divide us are all too obvious. We are increasingly self-segregating by income and education. Due in part to choice and in part to history’s overhang, we continue to live in racially distinct enclaves. Democrats and Republicans despise one another to the point where they avoid living in the same neighborhoods or dating each other. Many parents now frown on their children marrying “outside the faith” — by which they mean not Catholic or Protestant, but Republican or Democrat. And speaking of faith, in actual houses of worship, things haven’t changed much since Martin Luther King, Jr. called 11 a.m. Sunday morning “the most segregated hour” in American life.
So it would seem downright reckless to tamper with football – the one cultural touchstone that unites us, however tenuously.
Reckless is our president’s calling card. Or perhaps that’s too generous. He didn’t just suggest that the black players who knelt during the national anthem be fired, he called them “sons of bitches.” Football had some troubles before, but now we have a national concussion.
Who could blame people for noticing that when it came to tiki-torch neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Trump strained to stress that some were very fine people, but black athletes who protest police brutality get this treatment?
Colin Kaepernick forfeited the benefit of the doubt when he donned a Che Guevara t-shirt. But it doesn’t require much imagination to see that other black athletes felt backed into a corner. As David French wisely noted:
At one stroke, thanks to an attempted vulgar display of strength, Trump changed the playing of the anthem and the display of the flag from a moment where all but the most radical Americans could unite to one where millions of well-meaning Americans could and did legitimately believe that the decision to kneel represented a defense of the ideals of the flag, not defiance of the nation they love.
One reason some conservatives have seen a silver lining to Trump is immigration. They worry that our national identity is being frayed by the burden of assimilating large numbers of newcomers and trusted that Trump would crack down on illegal immigration and even reduce legal immigration. But if you’re worried about national unity, surely maintaining mutual respect and decency between American citizens who are already here is the bare minimum one expects of a political leader. People say Trump’s crudeness doesn’t matter. It’s stylistic. But that’s only part of the issue. It’s far more damaging that he’s dangerously divisive.
Police treatment of young black males, so-called “mass incarceration,” crime, whether the criminal justice system is biased – these are matters the left has attempted to exploit, and in fact, has successfully exploited for decades. That’s not a reason for the right to do likewise. We owe a duty to black Americans to take their concerns seriously. Even if it were the case that no black man had ever received unfair treatment at the hands of the police – and that is far from the case – it would be the job of patriotic Americans to make that argument in respectful tones to blacks who feel aggrieved – not to taunt them and invite contempt for their views.
American life is still strewn with racial sensitivities. Decency demands that we attempt to soothe, not inflame them.
Published in Politics, Sports
Some supplemental data, from Heather McDonald, makes the case that these outbursts may be having the opposite effect from that intended. https://www.city-journal.org/html/hard-data-hollow-protests-15458.html. Might be worth a look.
Any reckless tampering with football began with the players, long before Trump opened his tweeter on the subject.
The obvious is often concealed to the punditry. Examples abound.
There were 416 murders in Chicago in 2014. That number might have gone below 400 in 2015, until the BLM movement came to town. This year in Chicago, there might be over 800 murders, mostly in black neighborhoods. This is the movement you and David French are defending because of your shared unhinged hatred of Trump.
Rich Lowry’s counterpoint to Mr French:
If Donald Trump Said Don’t Jump Off a [Redacted] Bridge, Would You Do the Opposite?
Maybe French is not so wise after all.
What a silly clueless column. A dog’s breakfast of the weakest aspects of some more complicated though ultimately unconvincing arguments.
Why not start with Ferguson and develop a few facts? Maybe consult some Heather MacDonald and stop relying on your hatred for Trump.
Reads like a conservative who really, really is more interesting in a spot on a show on Sunday morning and not the games later in the afternoon.
Moderator Note:
insulting the author[redacted]
This actually goes back to Ferguson, when 5 players ran out on the field imitating ‘Hands up don’t shoot!’ and the NFL did nothing. Long before Trump was a serious contender.
If you think these sports teams or sportswriters care about free speech, look up the name Steve Clevenger.
I detect straw men.
Mona,
What you are saying is the hallucination of the right that the Obama Administration was all about exploiting. Obama and BLM and the anthem NFL kneejerks all have the same thing in common. What they are protesting about doesn’t exist! That which is doing massive damage to Blacks, big city gang violence, is completely ignored and thereby obscured. This has increased the number of Black deaths not decreased. In short, Obama, as with BLM as with the kneejerks, doesn’t give a damn about Black lives. They are interested in using an ideological diatribe to gain and maintain power. Concentrating on not making waves and soothing sensitivities is the very right non-strategy that makes the ideological creeps so successful. Ideologues are not working in good faith for the success of this society. Every inch you give only ends with them taking a mile. Trump isn’t playing by these rules. Each time those who are so sure that his crudeness will backfire, discover in a few weeks that the reverse is true.
What you are proposing hopelessly doesn’t work. I didn’t support Trump originally and I didn’t predict the phenomenon of Trump’s confrontational style. However, experience has demonstrated this phenomenon again and again. It is time to recognize it for what it is and get ourselves to the point where we can say, “So be it.” We wish it didn’t have to be this way but apparently, it does.
Regards,
Jim
I used to enjoy reading Mona’s stuff. Now I ask myself “Where is the slam on Trump?” when I start to read.
(Oh, there it is.)
I’m glad there are those on Ricochet who can find something else to write about.
Moderator Note:
Unnecessary.[redacted]
The NFL players have the right to protest, the fans have the right to boo and boycott their games and the president has the right to call them out for disrespecting our country. That said, kneeling or not showing up during the National Anthem is reprehensible, especially for a group of millionaires who can’t even articulate why or what they are “protesting.” On the other side, there were much more effective and classier ways for the president to admonish the players and the NFL, but unfortunately he just doesn’t “have that club in his bag.” And we are diminished.
I recommend reading this instead. It’s a much better column on this subject.
Kneeling Protests Are The Worst Form Of Resistance Ever
I’ve lost track on the acceptable labels here on Ricochet. But I think with a little work we can find an acronym buried in this headline:
If Donald Trump Said Don’t Jump Off a [Redacted] Bridge, Would You Do the Opposite?
(Rich Lowry’s counterpoint to Mr French)
It has become cliche but this is how we got Trump.
The polls show 60-70% of the public does not like these protests at football games.
Rather than try to understand the point of view of this majority, you suggest their views must not be allowed or the protesters might become inflamed. Our side does not generally riot. Trump is what you get when you tell the voters your voice does not matter, only the voice of some other group.
Although I find the use of the word “job” rather odd, it actually is part of the job of the above mentioned Heather McDonald. It’s unfortunate that much of what she communicates in respectful tones has gone unheeded.
And now some words of wisdom from the Jonathan Last (police bashing) column, cited approvingly as evidence by Ms. Charen that fair treatment of black men is “far from the case”:
A totally different experience? What does that even mean? Last brings up the usual few incidents (Eric Garner, etc.), but basically expects us to . . . well, take his word for it. And what qualifies Last to know this, whatever it means?
Much, much more often?
Last apparently felt obliged to at least touch on the Ferguson incident, but I found it telling how he soft-peddled his description. No, Brown “wasn’t an innocent bystander”–he’d just ripped off a store owner. And no, it “wasn’t clear . . .” In fact, it sooo wasn’t clear that the officer was completely exonerated in an independent investigation. This is objectivity?
But at least he takes the side of Americans.
Stop trading in polite cliche please. We very comfortably discuss women, novels, movies, local politics, women, cars, religion, money, our brighter hopes and darker impulses and our disappointments.
And we discuss women.
We talk about our kids a lot, and our aging parents. Get within a few male friends with their forearms on the fence at the next high school baseball game. You’d be amazed how easily and frankly (and at times odiously) we discuss our little worlds.
Moderator Note:
Clever pun it may be, but it's still name calling. Save it for another thread please.[redacted]
A new guy bought the house beside me. He is painting his house, I am preparing my deck for stain. We had no trouble discussing our chores, our families, area crime, and a local school bond coming up for a vote. Neither national politics nor sports were brought up. Normal people are not all sitcom characters. We are not all one dimensional, sports are not the only thing we can discuss with another man.
The JustUs Brothers have added a sister to the cause.
For a different perspective James Robbins writes in the USA Today that it is the protests and kneeling that are divisive. That they will only hurt the NFL and the players.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/09/26/fl-stop-self-destructive-grandstanding-and-just-play-football-james-robbins-column/701472001/
I think it’s great that a headline of a National Review article gets redacted on Ricochet. Not quite sure why that’s amusing but it is. I guess what happens at NR stays at NR.
Edit: The link’s URL contains the forbidden reference. Can’t redact that without breaking the link. Conundrum.
It is flabbergasting that so many metroposh conservatives imagine that white Americans, if given a chance to choose the stork’s destination from the other side of the veil of ignorance, would say “Whatever” or “Maybe black, in Newark, teenage mom who can’t read What to Expect When You’re Expecting, because I’ll really rack up the bonus points on my SAT.”
Guess what? Most conservatives understand (and yes we can never truly understand) that it sucks deeply to be born poor and black in any of the ghetto dystopias created by liberal politics and leftist culture.
We just don’t think that cop-bashing and public displays of arrogant privileged desecration are a decent response.
It is indecent to pretend that cops or conservatives are overseeing this disgrace. The Democratic Party has engineered this. And the never-ending national conversation about the national conversation about the national conversation about race will never include the fractured black family, astronomical rates of crime and routinely accepted domestic violence, welfare, criminal incompetence of urban schools and the neverending import of low wage populations onto the second rung of the nation’s employment ladder.
The “But Trumpers” are really the most useless commentators on the scene today.
Yes, but to know that, a person would need to venture outside the Beltway and move among the Normals (eeeewwww!).
OK, I’m stealing that.
Yeah – I wondered about it when I cut and paste the link. I certainly didn’t feel right messing with the headline and assume that there’s more latitude with a quote. Coincidentally, the first time someone dropped a forbidden word in front of my mother it was quoting a sportscaster.
No harm no foul. Rick Lowry: the new bad boy of Ricochet!