Cleveland Browns players forming an anthem-rejecting prayer circle. I think I stole this photo from Getty. I usually do. Sorry, Getty!
Last year, an American footballer called Colin Kaepernick got – rightfully – a lot of praise after he refused to stand for the US national anthem before games as part of a Black Lives Matter protest (I wrote about it a lot on here, as this, this and even this post prove).
Kaepernick’s travails since, including failing to get a team this season, have been widely documented worldwide. (Update: The Washington Post has published a great profile of the man – The Making of Colin Kaepernick – that’s well worth your time). But what isn’t getting anywhere near the attention it should be outside the US right now is that A LOT of other footballers have taken his stance and run with it.
Right now, in the sport’s pre-season, it seems like every team has at least one person protesting the anthem. There’s players kneeling and praying (see the Cleveland Browns in the photo). There’s guys taking a knee, others sitting alone, some raising fists. They include everyone from Super Bowl champions to nobodies.
Colin Kaepernick’s become enough of a name that journalists outside the US can write about him happily, but people should realise he’s not the only one using the Star-Spangled Banner in a way that it has been for decades – to try and hold a mirror back at a country. Let’s give them their due.
This is Colin Kaepernick after being tackled, but it sums up how I’m feeling about his decision! Credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
American footballer Colin Kaepernick has announced he will stand for the US national anthem next season, ending his months-long protest against the treatment of minorities in the country.
I know it’s because he needs a job – the San Francisco 49ers have decided not to keep him on – but it’s a shame. You could easily argue things have got worse in the US since his protest started and it’s needed more than ever.
Expect fewer protests all round soon: the US soccer association has announced a new policy saying all players have to “stand respectfully” for anthems at international matches. Last year, Megan Rapinoe kneeled for the Star-Spangled Banner before two games – aping Kaepernick. Guess she won’t any more.
One soccer team even played the anthem early – before players took the field – to stop any potential protests. While there is, of course, at least one Congressman giving interviews calling Kaepernick “sympathetic to ISIS“.
You could argue those actions are no more inflammatory than the protests, but surely a real patriot is confident enough in their society to allow room for protest, especially when they’re continually trumpeting the “freedom” that society has?
The only good thing to say about the saga is that politicians haven’t passed any laws forcing people to stand yet, because that has happened before: in Japan, of all places. Japan is home to the world’s longest running anthem protest and if you want to learn about it, read my book, although I’ve just written an article for Foreign Policy magazine about the main protester – a lovely woman called Kimiko Nezu – that updates things and includes her views on Kaepernick. It also includes some quotes from a man who got beaten up for protesting India’s anthem.
Kimiko Nezy (on the right) celebrating in May after Japan’s Supreme Court ruled she shouldn’t have been suspended from her teaching job for six months for refusing to stand for the anthem. The ruling only covers a punishment in 2007, bizarrely, so she has many more cases to fight
Perhaps the only truly good thing to have happened in response to the Kaepernick saga so far is that South Park has satirised it. See below for a clip that includes a stadium announcer saying, “We now ask you all in solidarity to please rise, or sit, or take a knee, to honour America.” Very droll.
This weekend, an American footballer, Colin Kaepernick, refused to stand for the Star-Spangled Banner. Here is an amazing picture of him sitting:
Which apparently makes for huge news in the States, especially after he said this afterwards:
I am not going to stand up to show pride for a country that oppresses black people and people of colour. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting away with murder.
I was genuinely shocked when I heard the news. Not because of what Kaepernick did, but because he’s the first.
The Star-Spangled Banner is something I’ve been expecting Black Lives Matter supporters to have long used in protests or to have protested against. I mean, “the land of the free and the home of the brave”? That hardly seems to ring true at this moment, does it? I’ve also long been expecting an athlete – black or otherwise – to realise the symbolic importance of the anthem. I was sure one would do something during an Olympic medal ceremony.
[Kaepernick turns out to have been doing this for a few games without anyone realising, so maybe others have, but…]
Another potential flashpoint is the song’s third verse which talks about how “no refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave”. Those lines are referring to the Americans defeating British soldiers, who included a handful of ex-slave regiments. Some commentators are now looking at those words as meaning the anthem’s racist, especially as its author was a slave owner although, personally, I think that’s going too far. (The songwriter, Francis Scott Key, was a lawyer who tried to free slaves as well as keeping them, so his history’s complex, and the anthem is a vehemently anti-British song, not an anti-black one. Then there’s the fact no one realised there was a third verse until recently!).
So, why has it taken so long? I worry it’s because being labelled “unpatriotic” in the US has become so stigmatising – far more so than in other countries – that tackling the anthem is seen as too risky. That shouldn’t be the case. National anthems are there mainly to unite and inspire, yes, but they’re also there to reflect a nation – and that means they can and should be used to criticise it.
Kaepernick is in a long line of people who’ve used anthems to make political points (see my book to learn about the many Japanese who use theirs to protest right-wing politics, for instance, or just think of Hendrix doing his Star-Spangled Banner covers). I hope he’s not the last.
Kaepernick’s protest did make me realise one other thing: I haven’t written about Lift Every Voice and Sing, the so-called Black National Anthem, on this blog. The words were written back in 1900 for a group of school children, which probably explains why its message is so clear:
Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring
Ring with the harmonies of liberty
It was given a tune in 1905, but didn’t take on its current status until 1919 when the NAACP – the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – named it the “negro national anthem” and started pushing it. Here’s an amazing video of Ray Charles singing it in 1972:
Is it right for now? The message, yes. But, musically, obviously not. I’m also the sort of person who thinks every protest movement should write its own music.
The best black American protest song I’ve heard lately is YG and Nipsey Hussle’s FDT (F*ck Donald Trump), which has the benefit of being an utter banger as well as having a message. Enjoy below or, er, give Ray Charles another spin!
Republic or Death 