You may have missed it as the season wound down, what with all the NFL players doing their thing during the National Anthem, and all the subsequent fun and frivolity it caused on social media, but there was actually one -- only one -- player who knelt during the National Anthem in Major League Baseball. His name is Bruce Maxwell, and he is a second year, backup catcher for the Oakland Athletics.
Maxwell is of mixed decent: His father is black, and his mother is white. By all accounts, he is a really good dude, and like most black people in this country, he has, at various times in his life, been on the receiving end of some pretty nasty racism.
I won't recount his whole story here. Here is a link to a really good story about him. It's really long, so you gotta want it, but if you want to know everything about the guy and what he's been through, and why he made the decision he did, you should read it. I think it will open your eyes.
It opened mine, though not in the way you might think (or some others would want!) I have been on record as stating I believe anyone unwilling to stand for the National Anthem is a Piece of Trash. (Trump, you might recall, gave them a slightly more colorful name. You get the idea.) In the case of Mr. Maxwell -- and only this case, for now -- I will rescind that moniker. I do not think Maxwell is a piece of trash. After reading the story, there's no doubt that he is indeed a really good guy. (Even if he did say some pretty nasty things about Trump.)
But I still think he's wrong.
Here's why: First, it has become clear to me, even though I've really known this all along, that some of these men engaging in the protest actually think they're doing the right thing, for the right reasons. A case could be made that that is at least half the battle. They actually believe this is the right thing to do, and they're not hoseheads doing it specifically to be disrespectful to the flag, to the country, or to the veterans. And that belief can stem from a variety of reasons, good or bad, that I won't bother to go into here.
Ah... but disrespectful they are, nonetheless. And therein lies the problem.
Regardless of what side of the issue you fall on, there are some absolute truths that cannot be denied. And at the top of the list is the idea that standing for the National Anthem is universally seen as a sign of respect. We've all seen countless social media memes portraying one President or another during the playing of an anthem without his hand over his heart. I saw them all the time about President Obama, and I've seen a few since Trump took office. Regardless of the authenticity of those pictures, the point is clear: It is expected of people, especially people of authority, and certainly people in the public eye, to show respect for the flag, honoring the country that has afforded them so much. Additionally, it is understood that the National Anthem is played specifically to honor the brave men and women who not only are currently serving to protect our country, but those who gave their very lives to protect the freedoms our country represents.
It's universally understood.
It is precisely why the anthem is played at sporting events. Most people understand that at the end of the day, professional sports in this country is just grown men and women playing kids' games. In and of itself, it's really not all that important. But the respite it provides to everyday schmoes like us, the break from reality it enables, and the entertainment value professional sports offers all lend themselves to the idea that but for those brave warriors who put themselves on the wall for the rest of us, we simply wouldn't have the freedom to celebrate in such a manner.
And there's another absolute truth about the Anthem: It has absolutely nothing to do with racism or policemen. None, whatsoever.
Which is why, unless you're protesting the military, the idea of kneeling during the anthem to protest anything is so wrong. It's misguided. You're pointing your protest in the wrong direction. Why would you want to slap the face of someone who hasn't done anything to harm you?
It would be like me picketing out in front of your child's elementary school to protest the rising cost of healthcare. It makes no sense. They're not related.
Maybe a better example would be this: It would be like an anti-abortion group protesting in front of a church. Christians aren't promoting abortions. The protest would be better served in front of an abortion clinic, or a Planned Parenthood facility.
See, that's the rub here. You can say you mean no disrespect to the flag, the country, or our veterans, and yet, that's exactly what you're doing. If I walk up to you and slap you in the face, I can't, in turn, very well say to you, "Sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you or disrespect you." When you kneel during the anthem, no matter the reason and regardless of your intentions, you are dishonoring everything it represents. You are -- period.
Colin Kaepernick, who started this whole mess, has a very specific skill set. He's not a scientist, or a world-renown mathematician, or a global finance genius. He's an athlete. A professional athlete, to boot. As a pro in the NFL, that makes him one of the best in the whole world. And as a professional football player, the ONLY country in the whole wide world where he can ply his trade and be afforded the money, the status, the fame, the platform, and the notoriety he has, is -- that's right -- the United States -- the one he's chosen to protest.
Can't happen anywhere else on the planet. He's jobless in any other country in the world. No other place on the entire globe offers him the unique opportunity he has right here in the good ole US of A. And he's starin' the old gift horse right in the mouth. He's chompin' on the very hand the feeds him. He's standin' up the one that brung him to the dance. He's slappin' Lady Liberty square in the face.
Which brings me back to the A's Bruce Maxwell. For all the reasons above, he's wrong for his choice. But there's something more.
America doesn't represent racism. It doesn't. It never has.
Our very Declaration of Independence confirms this. "ALL men are created equal." Long before our forefathers understood what that phrase truly means, they certainly understood the concept.
I'm not going to get into a long discussion here of the racial history of our country. I'm trying to make a larger point. Slavery is an unfortunate thread in the history of not only the United States, but most other countries around the globe as well. But it's important to remember that the ideals on which our country was founded wasn't wrapped in bondage, but rather, freedom. And it was that very ideal -- freedom -- that caused the better half of right-thinking Americans to wage a Civil War against those who couldn't and wouldn't accept the fact that one man should never see another man as inferior just because of his race.
Since that time, our society has slowly but surely continued to weed out those who still don't get it. Many great men and women of all races have given their lives over the past 150 years in that cause. But as we flash forward to today, does any right-thinking American really believe that our country is inherently racist? I mean, for real?
Make no mistake: the episodes of racism Maxwell and his father have witnessed in their lives are very real. As are the episodes that most other minorities have faced at one time or another.
But those instances stand out because they are out of the norm. There are, indeed, some real boneheads out there. Mean, nasty, racist bigots dotting the landscape. But their numbers are thin, and thinning.
The group that initiated the rally at Charlottesville, Virginia a few months back put out a nationwide call for like-thinking individuals to join them in their rally for the weekend. A nationwide callout resulted in what the media reported as "hundreds" of protesters.
Hundreds.
Think about that. There was a time in this country where a callout like that in a single state might net protesters numbering in the thousands. Not anymore. "Hundreds" is a lot -- too many, truth be told -- but in the whole scheme of things is minuscule in light of a call for protesters that went out over the whole country.
Maxwell is right to be disgusted by such actions as he's witnessed. It's good that he's been shaped by such incidents and that he's chosen to make himself a better person because of them, and to be a better person to others. But to aim his protest in a direction that doesn't represent or stand for the very ideas he's protesting is simply wrong. It's pointed in the wrong direction. America doesn't represent racism. A few bad apples doesn't define what we stand for.
I wanna be clear: I don't believe white cops are murdering black people at random, for shear kicks, in grossly exaggerated numbers the way others want us to believe. Statistics show that white cops killing black people account for far less than 1% of all the black murders in the country each year. In fact, black on black murders account for upwards of 90% of the total.
Nevertheless, there are some bad apples. And the incidents that many black persons are faced with are in most cases very real. We can do better. We can always do better.
But none of that has anything to do with the National Anthem, why it's played at the beginning of each sports contest, the brave men and women it honors, or the freedom it represents.
To openly defy it -- for any reason -- is just wrong.
It's just plain wrong.
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