Almost three years ago, I wrote a post about a pledge, and concluded it by promising a companion post about an anthem.
And then the moment kind of passed.
Soon after we would move to Texas, and soon after that move again. Pro football players kneeling during the national anthem pretty much fell out of the national conversation, but this post has pretty much been percolating in my mind for the past three years.
And now, after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Derek Chauvin, the very injustice that propelled Colin Kaepernick and other athletes to kneel during the national anthem is very much back in the national conversation.
The Silence
Before I share some thoughts on kneeling during the anthem, I want to address silence. There is a popular slogan nowadays that “silence is violence” or sometimes, “white silence is violence.” As well as a less provocative version that suggests that silence is complicity.
I reject this, and I would invite my audience to consider some credible alternatives:
Silence can be shock.
Silence can be grief.
Silence can be listening.
Silence can be learning.
Silence can be wisdom. Proverbs 29:11 says that “a fool gives full vent to his spirit, but a wise man quietly holds it back.”
Silence can be deliberation.
Silence can be prayer.
Silence can be contrariness, a protest against the demand to speak arising from the present culture of outrage. The response of Hillsdale College under pressure to make a public statement about racism was a beautiful rejoinder to the perpetually outraged, noting “There is a kind of virtue that is cheap. It consists of jumping on cost-free bandwagons of public feeling — perhaps even deeply justified public feeling — and winning approval by espousing the right opinion.”
Silence can be fear that a nuanced or reasoned position on an emotionally-charged issue can be mistaken for insensitivity and pilloried. I write with the nervous expectation that some are going to read this post and think I’ve gone all “woke” and others are going to judge me not woke enough.
I have spent most of three years trying to avoid writing this post, and my silence at times has been about a lot of these things.
And if you came to the House today expecting pictures of our kids, you’ll have to wait a little bit longer.
The Anthem
This post isn’t primarily about The Star-Spangled Banner, although for context I may surprise some by saying I like the song, and on the few occasions where I’m at a live sporting event I prefer to prefer to sing it (heartily!) than to listen to it sung. It isn’t entangled with the same ethos of indoctrination that the Pledge is, but is a paean celebrating a moment of national defiance and fortitude and bravery during battle. I like that the highest note sung–and typically extended in fermata–is the word “free.” I recognize there is a controversy about Francis Scott Key being a slaveowner or lyrics in the third stanza that nobody ever sings, but I don’t believe these side issues are especially pertinent to the athletes who choose to kneel instead of stand, so I’ll leave them alone. So I like the song a lot, but it’s not a sacred song for me. I sing it with the same heart-intensity as I will sing along with Fortunate Son or Where the Streets Have No Name on the radio.
The Protest
But this post isn’t about me or the songs I like to belt out in the car. It is about the lives of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks and too many other names I’m leaving out for brevity. It is about the lethal force too commonly used by law enforcement, disproportionately directed at black Americans. It’s about the uneven scales of justice that protect agents of the state when they would otherwise be convicted of murder. And it’s about Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid and the scores of others who use protest to keep the conversation about racial injustice alive.
I want to invite anyone offended with the posture of kneeling during the national anthem to explore the possibility that it is a protest during the anthem and not a protest of the anthem. It is subtle difference but I believe it’s a crucial one.
I’m very aware that the outrage culture has a home on the political right as well as the political left, and as a lover of the national anthem, I sympathize with those who are offended by the knee-taking. One passage of Scripture that has helped me understand the mindset of the protesters is the beginning of Psalm 137:
By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?
The Star-Spangled Banner is clearly “one of the songs of Zion,” a song of national importance. While NFL players are not being asked to literally sing the song as the captive Israelites are, I can appreciate that the posture of standing is meant to convey participation, whereas the posture of sitting or kneeling is meant to convey dissent. “How shall we sing the LORD’s song in a foreign land?” feels very similar to what Kaepernick initially said about the focus of his demonstration: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. 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 paid leave and getting away with murder.”
The “foreign land” in our present context is not literally a foreign country, but the sense in which the rights and freedoms we enjoy as Americans have not been enjoyed uniformly. The athletes who protest are not personally oppressed, but are advocating for those who do feel oppressed as though they are foreigners in their own country. Phil Vischer of VeggieTales fame produced an 18-minute video summarizing America’s racial history from the abolition of slavery to the present, and if you’ve not already seen it, I highly recommend you check it out. I don’t think you have to necessarily share every political opinion of the man to appreciate the historical context he shared, which I don’t think is under dispute.
By hanging up the lyres and refusing to sing a song of Zion in the presence of his tormentors, the lamenting psalmist is not despising his home, as the next couple verses make explicit:
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!
Neither are the protestors despising America. Don’t dismiss that because it’s not what your tribe is telling you. In Kaepernick’s words: “There are a lot of things that are going on that are unjust [that] people aren’t being held accountable for. And that’s something that needs to change. That’s something that this country stands for—freedom, liberty, justice for all. And it’s not happening for all right now.” Sounds to me like he understands what the country stands for, and recognizes we are out of sync with our founding ideals. There is a kind of patriotism called constructive patriotism which identifies when America is not all America should be and shines a light on a problem that it might be solved.
My aim in writing this post is twofold. First, I would commend on this Independence Day 2020 an appreciation for protest in the abstract. Isn’t protest a pretty important part of our national identity? What I mean is, I would hope that it’s possible for one to be entirely unsympathetic to the motivations of Kaepernick and Reid and still see the beauty in the protest itself. It’s hard to imagine a posture more nonviolent than kneeling. It causes no injury or loss of property or interruption of infrastructure. No sticks, no stones. Lady Liberty does not feel microaggressed. But wow—what a nerve was struck, prompting no less than the President of the United States to rage-tweet his disapproval.
If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL,or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2017
Even without agreeing with the protesters, it is appropriate to recognize the value of protest in general. Tricia Beck-Peter of the Foundation for Economic Education wrote eloquently how “the whole point of free speech is to rebel when those with more power are wrong.” Freedom to speak truth to power is one of those things that makes America truly beautiful.
The Response
And my second purpose in writing this is, in spite of my defense of silence, there’s a part that I recognize I’m able to play—however tiny—in moving America towards greater racial justice.
I wasn’t initially there. When “black lives matter” was first a slogan, I was more on board with the “all lives matter” alternative. After all, it’s because black lives are human lives, God’s image-bearing lives, that they matter. But I’ve grown to understand the insensitivity that is felt when the more inclusive slogan can appear to overlook the acute struggle experienced by many black Americans. I still regret the semantic confusion present because a Marxist organization shares the name “Black Lives Matter,” but I enthusiastically affirm that black lives indeed matter and are worth defending.
I still find phrases like “systemic racism” and “white privilege” frustrating, not because I find them necessarily false, but in their vagueness they don’t suggest any remedies. I don’t feel the conviction to apologize for any condition or result of my whiteness, but I do feel great sympathy towards some who experience headwinds of injustice that are real and not imagined on account of the melanin in their skin.
I did not watch the video of George Floyd’s death. Probably because I did watch Eric Gardner’s, and it was heartbreaking. It is awful, depraved stuff every time a human being ends another human being’s life, and terrifying when it is executed by the strong arm of the state.
The House of Gjertsen, which lists “defend liberty” as part of its household motto, humbly acknowledges it does not have all the answers. But I’ve read about some things I think are worth trying, and if all I can do is dust off my activist hat and tweet at elected representatives and vote, that’s what I’ll do. And that’s what I’ve already done. I’ll close with ideas I think could improve the way we do policing that are worth trying, and though none of them are explicitly tied to race, the data suggests they would be of great benefit to black Americans:
I push for ending Qualified Immunity which makes police largely unaccountable in civil lawsuits, effectively promoting irresponsible behavior. Police have a relatively high risk job, but using professional liability insurance would effectively weed out the abusive officers by pricing them out through the underwriting process.
Decriminalizing marijuana possession, along with any other victimless crimes, would reduce the negative interactions that law enforcement has disproportionately with African Americans and reduce the number of families broken up by incarceration. (This viewpoint is not shared by everyone in the House of Gjertsen.)
Ending the Section 1033 program allowing local police departments access to surplus military equipment designed for war would be a helpful step, since the function of law enforcement is really quite different than warfare, or at least should be. Bayonets and tanks are not the tools of civil servants, and the secrecy with which they access them is deplorable.
Ending civil asset forfeiture is a no-brainer. It gives a direct financial incentive for law enforcement to violate Constitutional rights.
Outside the scope of law enforcement reform, the greatest obstacle to racial justice is a vast aggregate disparity in wealth and income. Permitting a voucher system to allow children in poorer districts to escape from failing schools is a step in the right direction.
There are other ideas, I’m sure; I’m still learning. Other reform ideas are welcome in the comments.
This Independence Day, I am thankful that present-day America is one of the most egalitarian nations in history. As far as we’ve come, we still have a distance to go, and I’m thankful also for those who courageously protest, keeping the light shining on the road that lies ahead.
Update 9:50 CST:
We’re on vacation spending some quality time with our besties Ole & Margaret. Abby suggested I include one photo of our kids in today’s post.
All of this will take time. But unless we start right now, the events of these past several generations, years, months, weeks, and days will become more and more routine, and our democracy based on the rule of law will erode.
During the civil rights movement, white students joined the Freedom Rides, marched on Washington, spoke out against injustice and locked arms with black men and women to demand change. In these troubling times, each of us should think about how we can effect change in all of our communities and work to make it happen. It is time to speak out against politics of hatred and policies that divide us. As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
As a black woman that is the descendant of slaves and slave masters and started in healthcare as a housekeeper and now a nurse practitioner we all understand the problem; it is the solutions found in silence which is deafening. Thank you broadening the understanding of silence even as outlined by the word of God.
You know, I’ve followed this blog and its predecessors for– Heavens, at least a decade at this point. Probably longer, because I think I first started reading your posts when I lived in Arizona, and that’s been more than 10 years. I’ve enjoyed seeing your family grow and admired how you’ve all weathered some intensely stormy personal times. Still, I always kind of braced myself for any of the more political posts that cropped up, because we’re not philosophically aligned most of the time.
I did the same when I spotted this post the other day. Unfairly, as it turns out. But then, I’d argue that trying to build a more just and equiable society isn’t a philosophy. It’s not a political stance; it’s a moral one.
I learned a new term back in May that I’d like to share with you if you don’t already know it: anti-racist. It means more than not being racist; it means actively working against racism and chaging the systems that have perpetuated the same. Some of the ideas that you listed? Anti-racist ideas. And quality ones at that, although I have some strong feelings about vouchers.
I guess what I am saying is: thank you for this. And for proving my initial apprehension so, so wrong.
On your introduction about silence, the latter proved to be the most powerful tool against injustice on a criminal case 30 years ago in Argentina (where I live).
A teenage girl was found murdered, I will not go into much details since the circumstances are absolutely horrifying, but from the begining authorities did not investigate at all. There were other signs that there might be influent people involved as well, like the head of the local police ordering to wash the body before the autopsy, it looked as if it’d be yet another case of a girl murdered and treated as a disposable object.
But María Soledad Morales, that was the girl’s name, mattered to someone: her school’s rectoress, a nun. She organized “MARCHES OF SILENCE”, I was really young back then, but there are few things as overwhelming as hundreds of people demonstrating silently.
These silent demonstrations sent shockwaves throughout the Country, and I think they brought about a much needed change on our attitude towards cases involving murdered females. Just so you see what those seeking justice for María Soledad were facing, one of the accused murderers’ father attempted to deny his son’s involvement by saying; :”If my son had anything to do with this case, the body would have never appeared,(because) I have all the power”.