August 30th: Sidelined for the Silenced

We are officially at the point in the football season where we will hear far too much about second string quarterbacks and the gossip that go with them. What we don’t necessarily expect is that it will be their behavior on the sidelines that gets our attention, rather than their play on the field.

As if Colin Kaepernick didn’t have enough going on in his life, fighting for a roster spot on the San Francisco 49ers, he went and brought the limelight upon himself on Saturday night when, during a preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, he refused to stand during the National Anthem. When asked about it after the game, he told reporters that he had no intention of standing in respect for a nation that refuses to show respect to its minority citizens.

What has followed has been a storm of criticism and analysis. Everyone from former teammates and coaches to presidential candidates have weighed in on whether or not Kaepernick was right to use his status as an NFL player to call attention to an issue he deemed pertinent.

When taking a step back from whether or not you agree with Colin Kaepernick, it is important to acknowledge the courage and humanitarian nature of what he is doing. This is a man who is using his influence to try to make changes to the world around him, calling for social justice and for equality. This is something that athletes don’t do nearly often enough. But sports have always served as the cutting edge for some of the world’s greatest social justice campaigns. Jackie Robinson not only broke baseball’s color barrier, but also sparked a national conversation about African Americans participating in American life. Muhammad Ali used his status as a boxer to protest the Vietnam War, a decision that went far beyond the ring. Now, athletes across the sports world are attempting to serve as leaders to fix the racial tensions in our world, and are attempting to use their fame as sports stars to make the world a better place. To look around and see yourself as a member of a much larger society, and to understand that you have the ability to do something to call attention to and hopefully make an impact on the greater community is a worthwhile and powerful step toward making a positive impact.

Kaepernick’s one mistake is that he was quite literally sitting on the sidelines of the discussion. It was his inaction that is causing a scene, his refusal to participate in something that is causing the nation to focus on the issues. He would have been better served going out and DOING something, going out and getting active in making the world a better place. As an NFL football player, he had the opportunity to use his actions to spark MORE action from a multitude of individuals. What happened instead was that his inaction caused people to talk about Colin Kaepernick, rather than the issue of the role of race relations in the United States.

The flag is a symbol, and a vital one to so many who have served this country in a multitude of ways. We can argue for weeks about whether or not you agree with his decision to sit during the National Anthem. But that is exactly his point. He wants us to be arguing, to be discussing, to be rallying together as an American population to decide where we need to go together. He is hoping that his choices will rile up Americans to the point of actually looking at the world around them and demanding that it get a little better. In many ways, it has nothing to do with whether or not Colin Kaepernick stands on the sidelines or sits, and it has everything to do with what you think about next time you hear that National Anthem. His point was to say that the song is supposed to embody freedom and justice, and he won’t stand until the country matches those values. In his eyes, he doesn’t believe it does.

The goal is not for all NFL players to sit during the national anthem. Quite the opposite, in fact. The goal is for all Americans to thoroughly discuss what is essentially important to our nation and be willing to do what we think is right to move us forward in a way that acknowledges our flaws and demands that we work hard to make this country great. We can only hope that America is listening to WHY Kaepernick did what he did, not simply THAT he did it in the first place.

November 12th: A Big Thing Badly

The University of Missouri is just 115 miles away from Ferguson, Missouri, and it seems like the racial tensions have spread down I-70. This past week, the entire university turned its attention to the issue of racism on campus.

The Mizzou football team brought national attention to the college when they threatened to boycott all football activities if school president Tim Wolfe continued to hold his position. Subsequently, teachers organized walk-outs, students planned protests, and university operations came to a screeching halt. Wolfe originally refused to resign, but gave up his job on Monday morning after it became clear that his presence would cause endless turmoil at the school.

What, though, put the student body so squarely against their administrator? What made Tim Wolfe enemy number 1 in a way that meant that he had to be removed?

Over the last few months, there have been three high-profile examples of racism and hostile prejudice that have plagued the university. Wolfe, according to many, did not act swiftly enough, nor take the issues seriously enough, and thus became part of the problem, rather than part of the much needed solution.

I love that the football team took a stance against something. I love that they used their high-profile, often celebrity status to call attention to an issue of public importance, and call for action by saying that this issue is bigger than football. That being said, this protest made a critical error that will dramatically handicap its ability to actually fix any kind of problem.

By setting Wolfe as the center of the issue and the condition upon the return to normal college life, the focus becomes his resignation, rather than the elimination of the racism that sparked the problem in the first place. As soon as Wolfe resigned on Monday, classes resumed, the football team went back to practice, and the public attention to the school and their movement turned their focus elsewhere. Nothing actually changed in terms of race relations. Nothing changed in terms of creating a more inclusive and educational community. Sure, there will continue to be some protests by student organizations and the particularly inspired, but, for the most part, nobody will be paying attention a week from now.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter whether Tim Wolfe was a bad guy in this situation, or simply a decent man who got caught up not doing enough to help the growing tensions at his university. In either condition, the football team and the student body would have been much better off focusing the national attention on the actual issue of racism itself, rather than on a member of the administration.

When creating any social movement for change, it is impossible to be truly effective if the issue centers around any one individual. When that one individual goes away, whether a leader or a villain, the movement crumbles altogether, and prevents any ability for future action. In this case, we were so focused on whether or not the school president resigned that we failed to make any kind of substantive change to the racial climate of the university.

There is so much work to be done in terms of racial issues in our country. The experience of minorities in America just isn’t acceptable anymore, and we need to be doing more to be able to eliminate racism, both in the inter-personal form of racism, as well as institutional racism.

The University of Missouri did a big thing in saying that they will not accept Tim Wolfe’s handling of the situation over the last few months. In doing so, though, the focus was put on the wrong issue, and now we all have to figure out what to do when, in a day or two, the national attention will be gone, and we won’t have been able to do anything to substantively change the experience for African American students, frankly, any students, on campus.

We need to do something to fix the problem of racial tension that exists in this country. In many ways, it is good to see that the public is working to make something happen. The next step is to begin to be more thoughtful about the ways we bring attention to the important issues, and how to motivate the greatest and most effective form of change.

If you enjoy the work of the Zoot Perspective, please visit my GoFundMe page, to help support me on my journey. Thank you very much.

For more content from ZPMedia, visit www.zootperspective.com.

September 21st: The Last Grain

I’ve been fairly quiet about the Ray Rice situation in the last several weeks. Part of the reason is that I was waiting to see how other people reacted. Part of it is that I had a sneaky feeling more would be coming than just what we had originally learned.

All I knew was that, when Ray Rice was given a 2 game suspension for domestic violence against his soon-to-be wife, that wouldn’t be the end of the story. The NFL’s fan base and ESPN’s commentators were in an uproar, demanding an answer as to why the punishment was so lenient. It wasn’t until the video footage from inside the elevator came out that the NFL and the Ravens decided to take more drastic action, suspending Rice indefinitely and releasing him from the team, respectively.

The aftermath in the realm of social change has been enormous. The National Organization for Women (NOW) has demanded that Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, resign his job to make up for the judgement flaws coming out of his office. In fact, the clamor for Goodell’s head has been loud and enthusiastic.

I, on the other hand, am not going to call out the Ravens, the NFL, or Roger Goodell. While each of them is at fault, at least to some extent, the root of the issue goes to a much larger problem: the United States justice system.

Roger Goodell, you see, has made a habit of waiting until the law determines a player or owner’s punishment before levying one of his own. Therefore, when the legal system let Ray off with just a slap on the wrist and a court-mandated anger management class, Goodell took that to mean things were going to be ok.

Yet the public has all but let this go unnoticed. Only a select few have acknowledged that the failure on the part of the legal system is what set this problem in motion, leading to this debacle. We do, of course, also need to acknowledge that blame falls unilaterally on Ray Rice. While many people, institutions, and organizations have muddied the waters, if Rice had had control over his behavior and reactions, we could have avoided this whole situation all-together.

All of that being said, the public has made one heinous error that will cause the Ray Rice situation to go down as the worst thing to ever happen to the NFL, rather than an incredible opportunity for mankind. The situation has been made about Ray Rice. Everything has been about this one situation, what went wrong, and how we can punish this one man. Because we feel bad about what we saw in the video footage, we have ran this man out of town, ruined his career, attempted to decide the strength of his relationship (His now-wife has stood by him every step of the way), and generally turned him into a villain. In fact, we only really seemed upset when we actually saw the video. It wasn’t enough for Ray to tell us what he did. It was only when we saw the violence that we believed it to be really what it was.

I’ve never met Ray Rice. I know people who have, and everyone who knew him swears by his positive attitude, his sincerity, and his desire to be a good person. By all accounts I can find, Ray Rice is a good man who made a terrible mistake. His high school football coach, a beloved member of his community, threatened to quit his job if the high school did not return Rice’s jersey to the school’s rafters. He was that supportive of this man.

Here is the other piece of the puzzle. NOW has claimed that there is a domestic abuse issue in the NFL. Upon further review, though, 20 men have been charged with domestic abuse in the NFL in the past 4 years. Out of the 1,700 players in the NFL, that makes up just over 1%. While I’m sure only a fraction of those who are abusers actually face charges, there still is evidence that football does not experience any higher a rate of domestic abuse than any other industry. In fact, I would be willing to bet that in any group of 1,700 men in any industry, at least 20 will be abusive. This isn’t a good thing. It is a scary number. But it is representative of a much larger issue, not within the NFL, but within all walks of humanity.

By making this example a Ray Rice issue, we are failing to make it about all of the men and women who face abusive relationships in their lives. We are failing to actually help those people who cannot stand up for themselves. Focusing exclusively on Ray Rice will not make the problem go away. In fact, it may even lead to more women who are afraid of turning in their husbands and boyfriends for fear that, by ruining every facet of a person’s life, they will turn even more violent.

We, as a society, have the opportunity to teach humanity in this moment. We can teach men and women what a healthy relationship looks like, and in some cases what it doesn’t. We can teach how to learn from bad decisions and how to become better people when we mess up. We can teach how to take a bad situation and turn it into an opportunity for growth and learning. We have a choice, and right now, we are making the wrong one.

This is the second in my series of posts about causes that I will be making a donation to. I will be making a donation to a charity supporting those who have experienced domestic abuse. Hopefully a combination of advocacy and support will bring about a serious change for the better.