“The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race,” the President tweeted the morning after NFL players knelt, stood with locked arms, and even stayed off the field during the pregame singing of the Star-Spangled Banner. “It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem.”
Donald Trump is entitled to believe whatever he wants. But the presidency doesn’t grant him the power to judge anyone who exercises their constitutional rights.
There’s no need to replay any part of last weekend’s long narrative on this subject. What matters here is that respect for America is not a lawful command. Nor a value which stands blindly on a pedestal. The country must earn it in conjunction with its commitment to the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal,” which on the path toward to a more perfect union, has been rightfully extended to mean all people, regardless of race.
And the flag and anthem are little more than symbols which, before being old enough to question authority, we are taught deserve our unwavering allegiance.
My indoctrination began with reruns of Superman. He didn’t just outrun bullets and fly in the sky. The narrated introduction to every show ended by describing his cause as “the never-ending battle for Truth, Justice and the American Way.”
That comic book fiction prepped me for pledging allegiance to the flag on my first day of school. “Liberty and justice for all” meant me and every American I knew. Of course, six-year-olds aren’t aware of people beyond their classroom, school and neighborhood. Or even that another person’s experiences could be vastly different than our own.
A few summers later I began hearing our national anthem during weekend broadcasts of Red Sox baseball. It took on a powerful presence while attending my first game at Fenway Park. Standing beside my Dad, I witnessed the dedicated attention of the entire crowd as John Kiley’s organ was amplified over the stadium’s sound system. It would be the only song I ever learned to play on the organ my parents gave us for Christmas.
In 1968, another sporting event introduced me to a new kind of symbolism. Tommie Smith had the won Olympic gold medal in the 200-meter race. His American teammate John Carlos took the bronze. Together they bowed heads and raised fists during our national anthem.
I had seen the news coverage when Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated six months earlier. But I didn’t connect the two events because, as a 12-year-old living in a Boston suburb with no visible racial minority, the civil rights movement meant nothing to me.
That innocence hit a speed bump three years later. Every show about the American West I had seen, or book I had read, effectively characterized Indians as savages. But the film Little Big Man portrayed the quiet wisdom of Chief Dan George as he guided Dustin Hoffman’s life among the Cheyenne people. And it showed the unjust slaughter of innocents by the United States calvary.
If that story had any basis in factual reality, it would destroy my understanding of the “American Way.”
The seed of curiosity had been planted. By the time I finished college, I had read numerous books about Native Americans. The most influential were “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,” “Black Elk Speaks” and “God is Red.” I knew then that the American history I’d been taught in school had been infected with propaganda favoring one side of that story and more.
During those years, the Pledge of Allegiance had drifted into the background. I wasn’t expected to recite it again until I attended a school board meeting in 1986. It was the first time I stood silent with my hands at my side.
I don’t continue that practice because I lack respect for America. Rather, I believe an honest reading of the nation’s history should take precedence over any symbolic gesture of patriotism. Otherwise, truth and justice for all will never become the American Way.
How any individual arrives at the imperative of public dissention is as unique an evolution as it was for me. No one should deny our constitutional right to express it. And most especially, the President of the United States shouldn’t be abusing the power of his office by attempting to silence of any of us.
