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Kneeling for the National Anthem Violates School Bullying Policies
When NFL players break the nationwide community standard we codified on how to act during the National Anthem (and obscuring their cause in the process), they unfortunately influence the fecund minds of children who mimic them. So now we have children as young as eight disrespecting America’s flag at football games.
Students’ actions in and out of school today are judged against a school bullying policy. So worried a child may suffer the modern communicable disease called “triggering,” punishments are meted out for hurt feelings or perceived incivility toward another’s unknowable conscience or identity.
That’s not to demean bullying policies as a whole. Bullying can be brutal and schools are obligated along with parents to stop it.
Yet for some reason, these zero-tolerance bullying policies have not been applied to disrespecting Americans, nor the discomfort it may bring children who love their country and flag or have a family member serving in the military.
If students banded together in a planned show of disrespect for a Mexican flag, or a rainbow flag, you’d better believe they’d be punished for an inclusiveness violation. Try objecting to political Islam by saying you have no respect for it and see if a suspension for bigotry doesn’t follow. Yet the left hugs First Amendment language like an endangered tree when it comes to disrespecting the American flag. By a fair application of rules and laws, American should no more be a target for bullying than any other nationality.
In 2010 the Department of Justice began studying bullying in school based upon “national origin” and other differences. That’s no surprise. There’s been a federally recognized prohibition against discriminating against national origin since the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The federal government’s website dedicated to eradicating direct and indirect bullying noted this example of prohibited conduct from North Carolina: “Bullying or harassing behavior includes … acts … motivated by any actual or perceived differentiating characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin,…”
Bullying of this kind is frequent. A 2017 New York survey of middle and high school students showed that 65 percent of respondents said bullying occurred because of “race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, or citizenship/immigration status.”
National origin is the country from whence one comes or holds citizenship. Is American a national origin? Is it a “differentiating characteristic” worthy of protection like any other? Of course, it is. No bullying policy has an exception that allows bullying American children.
So what does the federal government do with a local bullying incident? The Justice Department actually intervenes, as they did in a case to force a school to use their bullying policy to help an LGBT student. The Justice Department explained the school’s infraction:
“The School District knew of the harassment … neither fully investigated the allegations, nor followed its anti-harassment policies and procedures. The failure to address and prevent this kind of bullying from occurring violates Title IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”
Not only does school bullying policies forbid insults to national origin, but schools being government entities, the Justice Department can force the school to use its adopted bullying policies. Let’s examine how a recent real-life incident of anthem kneeling could still play out.
On September 28, football players at Monroe Township High School (NJ) kneeled during the national anthem. Two referees walked off in protest leaving the legitimacy of the game in doubt. Only the refs were punished, being suspended for the rest of the season.
Monroe has an anti-bullying policy. In pertinent part, it defines and prohibits as follows:
“Harassment, intimidation, or bullying means any gesture … motivated by either any actual or perceived characteristic, such as race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression; that … has the effect of insulting or demeaning any student or group of students.”
What should happen next is a parent of any American student insulted by the planned gesture of disrespect for Americanism should demand the school enforce Monroe’s anti-bullying policy and discipline the kneelers. If the school doesn’t act, the parents not only have a private right of action to sue the school under Title IX, they can have the Justice Department intervene to enforce their child’s rights. The penalties for the school can range anywhere from monetary damages to loss of funding.
While a defense of First Amendment rights will be asserted, that defense is defeated in every case where bullying words are proscribed by the school bullying policy, as the school has a compelling state interest to prevent bullying.
Normally, I don’t encourage making a federal case out of school disciplinary matters, but if the left keeps jumping us and starting rumbles in the culture war, we have to take their own weapons to use against them.
Published in Education
Partly this is possible because sickeningly the Supreme Court has ruled that schools can censor what students do and say whether they are on campus or off.
The Bill of Rights is dying.
What, no “we’re better than that?” No “we mustn’t stoop to their level?”
I love it.
As is so often the case these days, the first question that popped into my mind was, “Where were the parents?” If my kid was on the high school football team and he knelt during the national anthem, I’d be out of the stands and hauling him off the field; at the very least, he wouldn’t be playing football anymore. This falls under the “My house, my rules” provision of the Parent’s Code. No need to be spending my time and money transporting him to practice and to games when he sees fit to disrespect our country (and his grandfather’s military service to it). So my concern is, what did the parents of Monroe Twp HS do? And a related concern: why did the coaches allow this to happen?
Excellent plan! I’m astonished that only the referees were penalized. Sheesh… And when you read the linked article about why the students [CHILDREN] were kneeling, it is clear that they are just copying what they’ve heard. And what they’ve heard is not factual.
Can someone explain to me why kneeling before God is a sign of respect, but kneeling for the flag is a sign of disrespect? I suspect the eye of the beholder is responsible for the difference, but I’m open to persuasion.
How we act during the Anthem was codified by law. The law has no punishment or enforcement provision, but it’s still a law, passed by both houses and signed by the President. Like all laws it sets a national community standard: Standing with hand over the heart facing the flag or music.
It is not that kneeling in a vacuum is disrespectful. Any action taken in protest is disrespectful to America’s adopted community standard, including what we’ve seen from various sports stars (kneeling, doing calisthenics, taking jump shots).
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/36/301
Is it possible to respect the flag while disrespecting the consensus codified by law? Or does the flag symbolise just the consensus and not dissent? Honest question – I don’t understand why it’s so awful to kneel rather than stand, but I may just be not getting it.
Interestingly enough, standing and saluting is a sign of respect among (more or less) equals.
Kneeling is a submissive form of respect.
So these men, if kneeling is meant to be respectful, are submitting to America.
If it wasn’t codified it would all be open to interpretation. Since it’s codified, it really is black and white. We’ve defined what actions are respectful. To take a different action inprotest is disrespectful.
Try crossing yourself during salat and see how that works our for you.
However did we ever do anything without it being codified?
First of all whether public school administrators like it or not students pray during school hours all the time. They are usually asking God to spare them from a pop quiz, or praying that they will have a substitute teacher on the day the essay they were supposed to have done is due.
We are raising a nation of skeptics, skeptics that are skeptical of everyone and everything but themselves. Skeptical of all authority, except their own authority to do as they please, when it pleases them.
As Mr. De Seno has explained, respect for the flag is codified and requires standing and crossing one’s heart (or saluting). While kneeling might ordinarily constitute a showing of respect, the US code [36 USC sec. 301] states that one is to stand at attention and face the flag. Accordingly, conduct other than that is, by definition, not respectful. Moreover, the participants who are kneeling have specifically declared that they are doing so because they do not respect this country – and by extension, the symbol of this country. As I recall, initially protesters sat down or turned their backs, etc. I suspect that when the backlash started, some bright lights among them came up with the thought – exactly as expressed by @zafar – that since kneeling is generally seen as submissive and respectful conduct, if they knelt then it would be more difficult for people to claim they were being disrespectful. It seems some people have bought into that argument. This may be an imperfect analogy (and someone is welcome to correct me if I’m wrong), but my understanding is that orthodox and conservative Jews (and perhaps Reform Jews) believe that pursuant to religious law one must cover one’s head during prayer (and many believe that it must be done at all times). This act shows respect for God who is always above us. Bowing one’s head during prayer is also a sign of respect. Should a Jew appear in a synagogue and pray without his head being covered, even if he bows his head, I suspect it would be taken as a sign that he is disrespecting God (perhaps some of our Jewish members can correct me if I’m wrong about this). If the individual then announced that he did not respect God and that was the reason he was not covering his head, everyone would presumably take him at his word; his bowed head would make no difference. The kneeling NFL players have acted contrary to the US Code, and they have announced that their reason for doing so is that they do not respect this country because it has, in their judgment, failed to protect innocent black men from being killed by agents of the State. My inclination, therefore, is to take them at their word.
Well but the Code isn’t God and arguably the Code isn’t even the Nation – if a significant portion of the Nation is protesting it as hollow or lacking.
It’s (I’m assuming) your country, so of course completely up to you, but imho they’re your fellow Americans and you should listen to each other instead of finding reasons to dismiss them. Jmho.
Zafar:
I don’t think that you’re trolling, but I’m not sure. I do not think that this is hard to understand at all.
We have a long-standing custom of standing to express respect during the National Anthem. I don’t think that the codification makes much of a difference, other than to make it clear that there is no legitimate dispute about the existence of the custom. But there is no legitimate dispute about the existence of the custom in any event. Everybody knows this (in America).
Other cultures and circumstances have different gestures or actions of respect. That is fine.
The point here is that in America, everybody with an ounce of sense understands that kneeling during the Anthem is the exact opposite of what you’re supposed to do. It is done deliberately as a sign of disrespect. It provokes outrage. That is the purpose of kneeling, in this context.
I don’t know your culture sufficiently to give a good example. Perhaps Muslim prayer. Imagine someone standing on his head, or jumping on a pogo stick — or even just deliberately facing a direction other than Mecca — during a traditional Muslim group prayer. It would be insulting, and if the person knew the custom, deliberately so.
Oh, I’d say making the sign of the cross and genuflecting during prayers might work.
Thank you, I’m not trolling, but it just looks like the civil religion version of Luther’s 95 theses, with people getting all Catholic Church in response.
The point is, Luther was criticising the Catholic Church, not God – just as these Kneelers would argue that they’re criticising the failure of the Code rather than the Flag itself – and in the end the Catholic Church was forced to respond rather than just dismiss or criticise.
The contention is that the code is hollow or lacking because, among other things, of the high death among young black men, falsely attributed to racist policies and racist cops.
They kneel believing and in support of lies and of a movement and party whose shock troops chant “No Trump, no wall, no USA at all.” They are at best useful idiots. “Listening to them” isn’t the answer.
They’re also burning down their own house. Here’s from an interview with legendary football coach and announcer John Madden:
Madden may not be right about “some folks.” But whether it’s bad football or the protests,
Well that’s pretty much how Mother Church first responded to the Reformation, right?
Zafar, I don’t think that your Luther analogy works. Luther posted his 95 Theses. He did not, for example, desecrate a crucifix or throw blood or dung on the altar during Mass. Kneeling during the Anthem seems more like the latter, to me.