“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”, thundered Samuel Johnson and it probably rings true. Underlying bigotry and stifling dissent can be explained away by wrapping oneself in the flag. Colin Kaepernick’s act of sitting out the Star Spangled Banner was to draw attention to the racial inequality existing in the USA. But it set off a maelstrom of protest from many present and former NFL players.
Obviously, a provocative and a polarizing gesture, but hold this thought in your head for a moment – isn’t it patriotic to want every American to be treated equally? Whatever darker motivations Kaepernick’s critics might ascribe, this is exactly the question posed to the public. The 49ers quarterback later modified his protest to kneeling while the national anthem played. Megan Rapinoe, in solidarity, became the first athlete outside the NFL to do so just before her side, the Seattle Reign took to the pitch against the Chicago Red Stars. Her explanation:
“I think it’s actually pretty disgusting the way he was treated and the way that a lot of the media has covered it and made it about something that it absolutely isn’t. We need to have a more thoughtful, two-sided conversation about racial issues in this country.”
Rapinoe should know a few things about discrimination, as an openly gay soccer player, and as a woman, fighting for pay parity in her sport. She has been a standout for the USWNT, a World Cup champion and an Olympic gold medalist. Those who follow her, know her as fiercely competitive and equally terrified of losing. But she understands sports sometimes is larger than a win-loss statistic. When Hope Solo in her fit of jingoistic pique dismissed the Swedes as “a bunch of cowards” after their penalty kick win against the USA in the Rio Olympics, it was Rapinoe admonishing her – “let’s be badass, let’s be fierce, let’s be competitive.”
“But we’re gracious, we’re humble and we play the game a certain way – whether we win or lose. And we’ve been on the winning side quite a bit and when we find ourselves on the other side we need to handle that graciously and unfortunately that wasn’t the case.”
Such political overtures from athletes are rare in this day and age in sports. We now have sportsmen making headlines for breaking doors down in a foreign country and lying about being held up at gunpoint, engaging in wholesale doping, tweeting homophobic rants, engaging in domestic assault and battery, extorting more money, or becoming cogs in the corporate machine. Such massive levels of navel gazing precludes any possibility of activism. And we are not talking of charity giving of which there are many athletes who give generously. This is about direct action.
Sports has always been political. Jesse Owen’s participation in the Berlin Olympics was an act of dissent, to show Hitler, black athletes and blacks were not inferior. In doing so, he dented Aryan supremacy by winning 4 gold medals and just probably created creeping doubts about a thousand year Reich. His unparalleled achievements did not change anything for him as FDR invited every white Olympian but snubbed Owens. Today, he is celebrated as a legend whose cultural impact supersedes his sporting accomplishments. Lots of things have changed since that historic day, the Civil Voting Rights Act came to existence, but in other ways; Owens own country is still stuck in square one.
The 1968 Mexico Olympics, was made famous by the “Black Power salute” by Tommy Smith and John Carlos, on the podium after winning the gold and bronze, raising their fists in the air during the national anthem. The IOC headed by noted Nazi sympathizer, Avery Brundage, ordered the USOC to suspend the athletes. When they refused, he threatened to ban the entire track team. Under duress, the USOC expelled the two athletes. Brundage called the salute:
“the nasty demonstration against the American flag by negroes”
Brundage as the head of the USOC in the Berlin Olympics was allegedly behind the decision to keep out Jewish athletes Sam Stoller and Marty Glickman and replace them with Owens and Ralph Metcalfe in the 4 x100m relay so as not to embarrass Hitler.
Back home, the two medalists and their families received racial abuse as well as death threats. Smith and Carlos were protesting racial segregation in the USA and racism in general, here and in South Africa and Rhodesia. At that time, none of their demands were met. But almost half a century later, the ripples from that powerful direct action still resonate: South Africa and Rhodesia were banned and only re-entered the sporting arena after ending apartheid, Muhammad Ali’s heavyweight boxing title was restored, Avery Brundage retired as IOC president with his legacy tainted by racism, and a lot more African Americans are hired as coaches.
There was too, a sign of the times, a camaraderie as the world got to know other courageous athletes who were supportive, like Lutz Long, the German long jumper who after coming second to Owens congratulated him and walked off hand in hand with the American from the stadium. The story goes it was Long who gave tips on how to get a longer jump. They formed a friendship beyond the Olympics. Owens said, “It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler… You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn’t be a plating on the twenty-four karat friendship that I felt for Luz Long at that moment”.
Long died in World War II and received the Pierre De Coubertin medal for sportsmanship. Peter Norman, the Australian sprinter who received silver in the 200 metres in the 1968 Olympics also stood on the podium with Smith and Carlos and wore the Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in solidarity. It was Norman who suggested Smith should give his left glove to Carlos after the bronze medalist forgot his pair. Norman was pilloried by the Australian Olympic Committee and the press – understandably in a country tainted by its own racist history of stolen Aboriginal generations. He is now remembered as a hero and when he passed away in 2006, Smith and Carlos served as his pallbearers.
Football was played by the “coloureds” in shanty towns in Soweto and leagues were organized in protest against rugby, the white man’s sport. The 1950s and 60s saw the formation of the South African Soccer Federation, which opposed apartheid in sport. 1961 to 1966 saw the rapid expansion of teams under the anti- racist South African Soccer League. Their efforts to isolate the apartheid regime led to the successful international sports boycott of the world with South Africa from 1961 to 1992 until the fall of apartheid. In Brazil, Socrates and his band of Corinthian team mates were trying to break the stranglehold of the cartolas that ran the club – the corrupt cartels which received military patronage and exercised total control of the players. They used the tenets of anarcho-syndicalism to launch their protests – through solidarity, direct action, and direct democracy to play an active role in bringing down Brazil’s military dictatorships.
Such activism is rare in these days of the professional athlete. The corporations, the sponsors, the agents, the talking heads are the new overlords. There is the here and the now. Political sticking out neck is not just swiftly punished by those who wrap themselves in the flag – the fans, the pundits, but by dropped endorsements and sponsorship. In a finite career, limited by age and injuries, that could make all the difference. Colin Kaepernick and Megan Rapinoe are rare beacons in such a world. Their actions need to be celebrated because it shows they care about a just world and are willing to take risks like all those wonderful athletes before their time.