When Mr. Kaepernick first went down on bended knee during the National Anthem in the Fall of 2016 to protest racial inequality and police violence against minorities I was angry and upset that yet again someone was disrespecting our flag and our Anthem. Like Mr. Trump and many Americans I couldn’t accept that a highly paid football player would take it on himself to become a symbolic focal point for oppression and racism in this great country.
The NFL has now come full circle by announcing its policy that players must stand for the Anthem or protest unseen off the field. You’d think I’d be cheering the NFL for doing the right thing. Instead I’m writing today to thank the NFL for another reason. For showing me that I was wrong. As viscerally gut wrenching as I find it when someone disrespects the preeminent symbols of our nation I find it far worse that I now live in a country where citizens don’t stand out of respect for the flag and Anthem but stand because they are forced to. The fact that so many Americans voluntarily rise to their feet in community at the playing of the Star Spangled Banner is a tribute to all that is right with America. But Mr. Kaepernick, along with all those who ultimately joined him in silent protest, have made me think, and realize yet again (how many times do I have to be reminded...) that our country is far from perfect and we all need to continue to work, together, to make it - as our President would tell us - “Great Again”. And perhaps that is what Colin was trying to do.
In the days since that now infamous knee first touched grass there have been too many subsequent shootings of unarmed black men, too public refusals of establishments from simply allowing minority citizens from using the restroom, too recent racist tirades from celebrity sitcom stars to think that we unfortunately don’t have a very long road ahead to bring us as a people back together as one nation. The NFL’s new rule doesn’t help us along that path. In fact it makes the path longer and more difficult by continuing to divide us. My father, long deceased, was a veteran who along with millions of others fought and died, in part, to preserve the very right to protest injustice wherever it rears its ugly head. He knew, like Mr. Kaepernick and now the NFL have now reminded me, that you can’t force respect for anything - even our country - but we can work together to make it truly worthy of that respect.
My apologies to those who graciously read my humble words expecting a simple chronicle of my physical travels for straying off the Road That Beckons (the name of this blog) into an area of social tumult. But my journey through this life I’ve been given has not just been a physical one. I’m not the same person I was in the brashness of youth nor will I be the same as I am now when I become an old man (hopefully many, many years from now!). I continue to learn from almost everything that touches me and every day I come to the conclusion that the older I get the less I truly know. Thus the journey, the road that beckons, continues.
