By now, everyone has heard of Donald Trump’s feuds with the NFL and the NBA. Donald chose to attack professional athletes this past weekend while displaying a total lack of concern about the utter devastation in Puerto Rico from the most catastrophic weather event that has ever occurred on US soil. Does Donald even know Puerto Rico is a US territory? Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa are all US territories– they all pay American taxes but do not have representation in Congress. Washington DC (which has a majority Black population) also has no actual representation in Congress; they have a non-voting representative, and Congress can overturn any law the people there pass. Washington DC and the US territories are suffering under taxation without representation.
Americans are extremely fond of performing their patriotism. “Taxation without representation,” the evil that sparked the American Revolution, is taught to every American schoolchild. This evil the British crown committed upon us caused us to take up arms and fight for our independence. 1776, BABY! PATRIOTISM! THESE COLORS DON’T RUN!
One of the first images that popped up when I did a google image search for “patriotism”
White Americans love to make a big show about our patriotism. We valorize the protest action called the “Boston Tea Party,” in which the goods of a private business (The East India Company) were destroyed in the night by Americans disguised as Mohawk warriors as a protest against taxation without representation. Today, Americans hold up “taxation without representation” as the ultimate evil that gave birth to our “great American representational democracy.”
Yet we are content to be hypocritical in our treatment both of political protesters and of US territories. Taxation without representation was oppressive enough to go to war; it was considered “tyranny.” We all but worship that war while committing precisely the same “tyranny” today. Puerto Rico has twice voted (2012 and 2017) in favor of becoming a US State. Congress would have to ratify that vote to make Puerto Rico a state, and they have done nothing. Why do we see “taxation without representation” as a nearly holy cause, a cause that was worth fighting our own (at the time) government, but see the taxation without representation we impose on Washington DC and US territories as our right?
In 1776, there were an estimated 500,000 African slaves on our soil who were deliberately shut out of the rights Americans demanded for themselves. Those slaves then went on to build a massive portion of the wealth of this nation, enjoying exactly none of it. The slaves and their descendants were denied equal rights in the US for many generations to come. While white Americans saluted the flag and wept about the freedom it represented to them, our very laws denied Black Americans basic human rights well into the 20th century, and, long after (most of) those laws were struck from the books, are still denied equal treatment in application of our laws and in innumerable other ways for which there is a mountain of hard statistical evidence. It is undeniable that there is systemic racism in our country in 2017, although racists do, of course, deny it.
Colin Kaepernick, at the time playing for the San Francisco 49ers, first sat during the national anthem as a protest against racism and police brutality, which overwhelmingly targets people of color. Refusing to stand for the national anthem points specifically to American hypocrisy, to Americans who weep over freedoms they refuse to give to others– freedoms like “justice for all” or “freedom from taxation without representation.”
Despite Kaepernick’s justified grievance against that hypocrisy, after speaking to former Green Beret and Seattle Seahawk Nate Boyer, Kaepernick decided to kneel instead, in order to show respect to the national anthem and veterans while still getting his point across. It was an elegant, quiet, peaceful, non-disruptive protest, precisely what white people always say they want.
Colin Kaepernick and every other professional, college, and high school athlete taking a knee during the national anthem aren’t sneaking out in the night to destroy private property like the Boston Tea Party’s “Sons of Liberty.” The Sons of Liberty disguised themselves in order to destroy private property as a protest action, precisely like today’s antifa black bloc protesters who cover their faces and destroy property as a protest action. Black athletes and their allies (including many veterans of all races) are just kneeling quietly. Yet white people are furious.
That people are claiming to be upset about disrespecting the flag is preposterous. People violate the flag code regularly without controversy, so it’s just not possible that their furious anger can come from “disrespect for the flag.” Here are some items from the flag code, Article 176, “Respect for the Flag.”
(c) The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.
(d) The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery.
(g) The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.
(h) The flag should never be used as a receptacle for receiving, holding, carrying, or delivering anything.
(i) The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever. It should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard.
(j) No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform.
Nor is their furious anger about the national anthem. The athletes aren’t booing it. They’re not blasting competing music. They are respectfully and quietly kneeling.
The Star-Spangled Banner has only been our national anthem since 1931. NFL players weren’t required to stand on the sidelines during the national anthem until the Obama Administration. If Tim Tebow knelt in prayer during the national anthem, no one would say a word. The problem is not “disrespecting the flag.” The problem is Black dissent. No matter what kind of peaceful protest Black people choose, white people are right there to tell them to get back in line.
The President of the United States claimed that white supremacist protesters marching under literal Nazi banners contained some “very fine people,” and then called NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem “sons of bitches.” This is obvious, open racism, and there are millions of Americans who applaud it.
Millions of Americans see no problem with demanding respect from Black people for a national anthem whose third verse mentions “no refuge for the slave” but “the gloom of the grave.” Millions of Americans see no problem with demanding respect for a national anthem that celebrates freedoms they routinely deny others. Millions of Americans see no problem with taxation without representation for majority non-white populations but hold as nearly holy the idea that taxation without representation was “tyranny” for white people.
What would this nation be like if we actually believed in the freedom, liberty, and justice for all that symbols like the flag are supposed to represent? What would this nation be like if we were as concerned about working towards justice for all as we are about reverence for a re-written English drinking song and a brightly colored piece of cloth? What would this nation be like if white people were as furious about racism as we are about Black men quietly kneeling?
Click here to learn more about how you can support Puerto Rico’s recovery efforts. Click here to learn more about Puerto Rico statehood. Click here to learn more about the Take a Knee protest.
