Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Misguided NFL Speech is Free, but Costly


Aren't you weary of this rancor?

Such divisiveness cannot be good for any country, let alone one that purportedly stands for freedom of expression.  Because while we all - from the president on down to the lowliest among us, even me - have the right to speak our mind, we often forget that with that freedom can come grave responsibilities.

For a president to curse those who make a public demonstration against something like the perception of police brutality, his followers should be alarmed.  For highly-paid celebrities to pervert revered symbols of their country's honorable identity, their followers should be ashamed.

Yet the correct responses by opposing groups are not being made, and that itself is frustrating and disturbing.  It used to be only fringe radicals who would do something as intentionally inflammatory as burning our flag, which is akin to what professional American football players have been doing lately with their demonstrations against our national anthem.  But now, since these are football players, a group of extraordinarily-paid young men whose net worth is based on the adulation their fans bestow upon them, suddenly we have a crisis sweeping America between those who want them fired for their petulance, and those who defend them through a thin sanctimony of righting an injustice.

As if, in either scenario, two wrongs can somehow make a right.

Because yes, while we have the right to insult the national anthem, or burn the flag, our doing so tends to say more negative things about ourselves than what we claim to be protesting.  Our spurning of national totems bespeaks an ignorance regarding how our freedom to spurn those totems has actually been secured for us.  What's particularly curious in this particular instance is how the national anthem somehow, apparently, enshrines the perception that law enforcement is getting away with the heinous murder of so many black men.  Why does belittling the national anthem directly correlate with one's concern over perceptions of police brutality, unless the person doing the belittling doesn't understand that that national anthem has been secured not by law enforcement, but by our military - a military that is comprised of and is led by people of many different skin colors and ethnicities?

We do not live in a police state.  Because if we did, most likely the demonstrations we're seeing before NFL games would have already been met with distinctly brutal official tactics of suppression.  But what are we seeing?  We're seeing a national debate over whether professional athletes should be doing what they're doing.  And a national debate is a far cry from suppression, even though no less than our president himself has called for suppression through the firing of players he sees as being disrespectful to our national honor.

For the topic of police brutality to be fairly debated and addressed in our country, especially in the eyes of those who claim it doesn't exist, mustn't our narrative stay on-point?  Dragging our military and the millions who've fought for our political freedoms into the argument only serves to further divide our country, not bring disparate parties to the table of peace.  There is such a thing as respectfully expressing discontent until a particular wrong is righted, but broad insults are as unproductive as broad dismissals that something like police brutality exists.

What really makes the NFL demonstrators look a bit absurd is the fact that they're among the wealthiest one-percenters in Amercia, a feat made even more remarkable since they're merely entertainers, not corporate titans, or inventors of products that save lives.  Basically all they do is run around with a ball and beat each other up, to the great delight of spectators who, for some reason, willingly spend a lot of their own hard-earned money to perpetuate this ritual.

To the extent that NFL athletes actually comprehend the power they hold over their fans, it's understandable for them to want to advocate for causes in which they believe, with a view towards making their fans aware of these causes, and thus forcing institutional changes across society.  This is the right that NFL players have, and in a sense, it's a good exercise of the responsibility they recognize that their popularity gives them.

Unfortunately for all of us, however, the way many NFL celebrities have chosen to highlight their grievances over the number of blacks being shot by police officers has nothing to do with the number of blacks being shot by police officers.  Instead, all it's doing is making a lot of people very angry.  Which is taking away valuable public attention from the cause these NFL players claim to be focused on:  the question of police brutality.

It's misguided speech.

So should it be banned?  No, not if you value what the national anthem represents.  Should people who participate in this misguided speech be fired?  No, because employers should value a measure of self-expression among their employees, at least to the extent that it does not conflict with the viability of the organization.  Should our president be advocating for their free speech to be curtailed?  No, because by doing so, he himself betrays an ignorance regarding what free speech really is, and he undermines his responsibility as being the primary public defender of that freedom.

It's a brush fire that our president has fanned into an inferno.  The whole thing is such a sad waste of time when our country should be focused on far more beneficent things - such as our problems with racial strife, which supposedly was at the root of all this to begin with.

Come to think of it, what exactly are the direct ways NFL players - who claim to be so concerned about young black men and their interactions with the police - are getting involved in solutions?  How many black NFL players, for example, have recently been arrested for assaulting women?  How many are producing multiple children with multiple women, creating unstable family unit(s)?  Where is this role model advocacy on behalf of other young black men who may be more susceptible to glamorizing the type of get-rich-quick lifestyle that selling drugs seems to afford (and that an NFL contract affords)?  How many NFL athletes are using their personal resources to pay for top-quality legal representation for black offenders who may have been victimized by police?  How many are holding substantive public forums to discuss this issue?  How many are meeting with their local and national political representatives to advocate for change?

Maybe many of them are, and we just don't know, because they're conducting further advocacy in private.  What seems more obvious, however, is that a bended knee or an absence from the field during the playing of our national anthem is an easier way to merely grab attention and stoke conflict.

What's even sadder about all this is that now, it doesn't have a good chance of being resolved constructively.  As has become habit for our nation, this mess will likely disappear from the headlines when something even more provocative and disturbing takes place.  And our national narrative will careen to yet another point of deep contention.

Meanwhile, many of us have become just a bit more jaded regarding our responsibility for preserving our freedoms of expression in everyday life.  Which can't be a sustainable pattern of productive civic engagement for as proudly independent a country as the United States of America.

And the republic, for which our flag... stands.


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