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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
I almost forgot this apparent cheap shot. Is it not the general consensus that Trump — ham-handed as his rhetoric sometimes is — was not actually calling neo-Nazis “very fine people,” but was instead referring to some perceived other group (who may or may not have existed)? This is not a distinction without a difference, and Ms. Charen seems to be adopting the interpretation of the left on this. Am I wrong? I almost hate to renew this discussion, but since the column already did . . .
Sir, you are on a fool’s errand. The usual suspects will weigh in with the leftist party line on this and it will turn into a 200-comment thread about Nazis and the KKK.
Not at all. We have a huge problem with so-called conservatives fully accepting the left’s premises and allowing them to set the boundaries of the discussion.
Conservatism is dying. “Conservatism, Inc.” killed it.
I am reminded why, during the Bush years, I stopped referring to myself as a conservative. It was because “Conservatism, Inc.” kept accepting the premises of the left. I’m at that place again.
I’m watching to see if you are right. I agree with @hoyacon that the President’s statement was very purposely misinterpreted.
For those people giving up on the NFL.
The Lingerie Football League has announced that they will be standing for the National Anaheim as it is too sacred to protest.
http://freebeacon.com/culture/lingerie-football-league-responds-to-nfl-we-stand/
I don’t Trump is a bombastic jerk but somebody has to fight BLM or more black people will suffer from feelings of victimhood and alienation and more will die due to black on black violence.
Trump might be saving lives.
If they don’t wear jockstraps, I can’t support them. Even if they do stand for the National Anaheim.
Just remember that for a not-insignificant portion of Republicans, the rule is “Trump, therefore Wrong.”
Oh, I dunno. They’re pretty insignificant.
At least.
Not insignificant enough.
The odd part is she did not slam Obama or the Dems near as much as she does Trump. At first it was irritating, then funny, now it’s sad, I suspect her next step is to become irrelevant.
Next step? It was more of a leap, and she jumped that shark long ago.
Next step?
I love Mona’s post’s.
It’s like she hands the Ricochety a paddle, bends over, and says “wack away” :)
What Ms. Charen doesn’t mention and the NFL players/protesters don’t seem to realize is that all of the recent high-profile incidents of police officers shooting and killing black suspects have occurred in large, Democrat-controlled cities. These are local police forces. If they need to be reformed, it must happen at the local level. The Federal government has gotten involved in incidents like Ferguson on civil rights grounds (rightly so) and even the Obama administration couldn’t pin anything on the officer in that case (and boy did they try!). What more can the Federal government do? Nothing! Disrespecting our nation as a whole by taking a knee during the National Anthem makes absolutely no sense and, as I said in a previous post, is reprehensible.
And where is the outrage at the Democrat leadership in these jurisdictions? Nowhere.
Whack away. As in (w)hack.
You know, at my school I sit at a faculty lunch table with 5 other guys and 1 woman. When we are all present, you know the only thing “we” will reliably discuss? Sports. The only sport I care anything about is tennis, so I have next to nothing to contribute. The female teacher is similarly disinterested. It’s not a stereotype, so I’m not sure why the thin skin. Sure, guys can and occasionally do talk about other things. But most often, it’s sports.
Here’s a novel idea: don’t like Mona Charen’s posts? Don’t read them – don’t comment on them. Ignore them. Just like everyone should have ignored Colin Kaepernick. If they had, the talentless jerk would already have been fired from the NFL and none of this would be happening. If a tree falls on the internet, you don’t comment on it, did it really happen?
“Join the conversation.”
Dog-piling and gnawing the same old bone is hardly conversation.
Is that not what Mona does ? She seems to be stuck, or fell down and can’t get up. How else do we un-stick her ? She is capable of so much more.
True. But ignoring posts you don’t agree with isn’t either.
At least with Mona we have variation on a theme. Most of her detractors play the same old saw over and over.
I suggest that not every member of Ricochet has to comment on every conversation, in order for conversation to occur. And that if you find a conversation not to your liking, it’s probably nothing more than an exhibition of good manners, and best for all concerned, that you should move on to the next one. Comments that serve no other purpose but to insult the author of the OP, or a fellow commenter, are best left unsaid, on this, or any thread.
With that in mind, would all please return to the matter at hand, and desist from the insults and personal remarks. Thanks.
It is interesting that virtually no one expressed agreement with the content of the OP. At most, there was a defense of the poster, as in, “Awww, now be nice, children.”
Surely you are not suggesting that all the comments fell into this category. For example, would you say the same of Mr Lowry’s critique (linked above)?
If you strip out the critical comments, there would be a deathly silence on this thread, which might be for the best after all. Ms. Charen might get the hint, should she happen to venture onto Ricochet.
Edit: As of this writing, this very same column has exactly zero comments over at RCP. Mission accomplished!
Well, let’s see. You know, I had to read this Post twice because I couldn’t believe that you had actually blamed it all on Trump.
Trump decided to call the NFL out because they wouldn’t stop the hate, Mona. Probably what pushed him over the edge was when a militant football coach forced a bunch of children to kneel. That’s seriously damaging to Americans everywhere. Trump did not force that coach to do that, but I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that it was that coach who was the final straw for Trump.
I had a lot of trouble finding any facts to back up your comments, and I finally gave up.
The people who are linking arms or kneeling “for unity” are “uniting” with people who believe that Michael Brown was murdered in cold blood by a racist national police force, solely because of the color of Michael Brown’s skin. Can’t you see that this can’t be allowed to stand? The truth must come out, and the people who are repeating the lies must be called out.
Please, I hope you will reconsider your position; its foundation is quicksand.