Introduction
Protests in professional sports has been occurring for decades and had started with professional athletes using their platform to bring more attention towards the injustices going on towards Black people. Protests from professional athletes range from Jesse Owens protesting in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, to Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico, to Colin Kaepernick protesting against the National Anthem in 2016. Due to the Kaepernick protest, other professional athletes had come out and took a knee during the national anthem on the field before football games. As a result of this, athletes have received criticism from fans to team owners to even President Trump. Kaepernick's protest had also led to players in other professional sports to protest peacefully against the national anthem as well, because of how resolutions to injustices were being ignored, which relates to the song “Blowin’ in the Wind” by Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan (1963) is a famous white musician who has had his music become the national anthem for the civil rights movement as he understood what blacks were going through and realized how the solutions were being ignored by the government. Dylan believes that there is no reason that the injustices that Blacks are facing should be ignored and that they deserve to have those issues resolved by the government when the solution is right in front of them and enforce it. But President Trump has chosen to respond to the NFL protests, by deciding to create and enforce a new policy that didn’t allow NFL players to protest against the national anthem on the field, and that any player who is caught doing so, that team will get fined, and the owner gets to decide whether to fire that player or not for doing so (Seifert, 2018). Kevin Seifert (2018), a national reporter for ESPN, has written several articles for ESPN around the sports industry and how professional sports has changed. This topic of peacefully protesting and immediately getting it shut down by the government also relates back to a “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” by Dr. Martin Luther King (1963) because the approach of Dr. King is as peaceful as a professional athletes approach for protesting and they are both fighting for the same reason which is because of the oppression and injustices towards Black people. Seeing the government immediately backlashing protests in professional sports brought up the question: Should the government interfere with political affairs in professional sports? Overall, an analysis of the background behind protests in professional sports along with the specific scenarios and reasons behind why protests have continued to occur in professional sports. To begin, the reason why the government should not interfere with the political affairs in professional sports will be established in this paper, especially if the reason why the protests are arising have solutions that only the government can implement and are choosing not to when the solutions are right in front of them. The government should not interfere with political affairs that arise in sporting events because it violates professional athletes constitutional rights therefore policies against protesting against the national anthem should be removed in professional sports.
Inequalities in Sports
Race and racism are the main cause behind protests that have constantly arose in professional sports and in college athletics. It was stated by Geremy Cheeks and Akilah R. Carter-Francique (2015) that “Race and racism have played pivotal roles in sports st all levels, thus CRT provides an appropriate lens to challenge the dominant discourse in sports and examine racial oppressions impact on college sport[s]” (Carter-Francique & Cheeks, 2015). Dr. Geremy Cheeks, PhD in sports management from Alabama A&M University, is an expert in sports management and has written several journal articles about HBCU schools athletic programs, and athletic programs in general, and Carter-Francique, PhD in sports studies, also works in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at A&M University and is an expert in sports studies, has also written journal articles about issues that go unseen in sports that is not usually seen we don’t usually see on a day-to-day basis. Carter-Francique and Cheeks’ would agree with what is going to be discussed next as they provide a background of what goes on in the sports industry at the collegiate and professional level. This leads to two examples of where this has been publicly displayed.
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Professional athletes have been against the system for decades now and this paper will start with Leonard Bates, African-American starting fullback for New York University. In the 1940’s, segregated southern schools made an agreement with other schools in the country, that schools that had African-American football players on their team were allowed to travel and play against the southern segregated schools as long as the African-American athlete was left behind because they weren’t allowed to play against them. This agreement was called the “Gentleman's Agreement.” Students had begun to protest New York University once they had found out about this agreement and had “about two thousand protesters picket[ing] the NUU administration building on October 18, wielding signs such as ‘Bates Must Play’ and ‘No Missouri Compromise’ (Horger, 2017). Senior Lecturer at The University of Ohio, Marc Horger (2017), goes back to the first publicly known protest that had occurred and had been widely known in the sports industry and explains the cause behind it and other significant and well known protests that have occurred as higher authority used their power to shut it down in the United States. His stance on this situation that has been going on for decades is neutral because he is just providing the audience information on some history behind well known protests in sports.
This can also be seen not only in football but this can be seen in basketball at the collegiate level. For example in the NCAA, there was a rule implemented where players weren’t allowed to dunk the basketball when they had the chance to. This rule was implemented because the Whites feared that African American athletes were taking over their league and that they were the center of attention around the sport and they had to come up with a way to challenge and see whether they were really that good and take that attention away from them. Willie Worsley, a guard who had played for The University of Texas at El Paso in 1966 a year before dunking was banned, stated in John Matthew Smith’s (2009) article that he “[thought] along about the time we won, they were seeing that people of color were dunking, jumping higher, and running faster. They were thinking, 'That's not how the game's played. Let's see if these 'athletes' can shoot'' (Smith, 2009). Ferdinand Alcindor Jr. also known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had concurred with Worsleys statement and believed that “‘there was no good reason to give it up except that this and other niggers were running away with the sport’” (Smith, 2009). With the injustices that athletes have continued to face, it brings question to themselves of whether they belong in where they are at whether it is at the collegiate or professional level or in society.
Government Interference
A significant issue standing in the way of a solution to the solution that was established is the the amount of money that teams participating in protests will lose due to a decrease in viewers and with the fines that come with protesting against the national anthem in front of a camera (NFL). This section is going to describe what actions the government have taken in order to attempt to bring an end to the national anthem protests. After recent controversy on the NFL protests that were led by ex 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, President Trump came up with a solution to ultimately end that. It is stated that for the NFL, any team “will be fined by the league if its personnel are on the field and do not stand and show respect for the flag and the anthem” and that team owners “may develop [their] own work rules, consistent with the above principles” (Seifert, 2018). This new policy led to a sharp decline in protests in the NFL by professional athletes as they put their careers in jeopardy but that didn’t stop Kaepernick as he continued to protest which later on led to his release from the 49ers and is now currently unemployed.
Although President Trump and the NFL had came up with the policy against protests against the national anthem, it didn’t stop professional athletes from other sports to not step up and fight against the injustices. They stepped up and used their platform as motivational as possible to ensure that the social injustices are addressed so that solutions can be came up with. An article released in July of 2018, revealed how white athletes feel about the protests that take place in sports and how “for the white players, it’s about the fear of losing their jobs”, and also how “[the] white fans share Trump’s tribalism that includes seeing white players as the brains and black players as the bodies, not too smart, who should just shut up and play” (Lipsyte, 2018). Robert Lipsyte (2018), an American Journalist for The Nation Magazine, attended college at Columbia University and has written several articles for The Nation about different stories that have made the headlines in the world. Lipsyte reveals how Trump portrays athletes based on race and how they should carry themselves as professional athletes. Lipsyte also goes on to show the issues that athletes of color have with Trump and the way that Trump responds to them in the article. Writer and human rights activist, Richard Lapchick (2018), states that with the injustices that are going on, it is going to be “harmful to our society because our children grow up idolizing and emulating these athletes, so to see them treat one another with such overt racism is disheartening” (Lapchick, 2018). Lapchick, despite being physically attacked, still thrived to push forward and continue to fight against injustice working with scholar athletes and even professional teams. Lapchick utilizes athletes perspectives on the issue and how they react to the injustices that they see or face, and believes that the racist acts will ruin the future generation and how they treat each other. Lapchick’s article connects to my individual argument because it gives perspectives of professional athletes and how they reveal the way that it’s going to affect the future generations.
Public's Role
It is very obvious that the public has already provided their perspectives on the situation at hand, but the most recent situation has occurred in NFL, where The Associated Press claims that social injustices may be addressed during the superbowl and most entertainers declined the offer to perform at the most recent super bowl. Entertainers like rapper Meek Mill, Cardi B, and Jay Z had expressed their emotions online when they had heard that Travis Scott accepted the offer and would perform alongside Maroon 5. Cardi B had taken her response to social media and had said that “she won't take the Super Bowl halftime stage until Kaepernick gets a job, but she will perform at a downtown concert next week” (The Associated Press, 2019). The Associated Press (2019) is a non-profit news agency who finds world wide news and sends it out worldwide. They have news articles in top news companies such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and USA Today, and they’ve been doing it since 1846 when it was founded. This Associated Press established the social injustices being known about and taking action by those who are trying to come up with solutions on how to fix the problem, but higher authority hasn't taken any action. The Associated Press would agree with Horger's perspective because this is an example of a form of protesting against the injustices in sports not only by athletes but by other famous people who were inspired by professional athlete protests.
Conclusion
The best solution to decrease rebellion against professional sports and the government and to decrease the amount of protests that occur in professional sports is to remove policies that go against protests against the national anthem in sports, and to also find solutions to the social injustices that are going on instead of just ignoring them. But if this solution were to go in effect, it would lead to a decrease in views of professional sports based on which teams choose to protest, and also with finding solutions to resolve the social injustices may come with money having to be an issue with that.
A circumstance in which my solution works is that in the NFL, players would be allowed to take a knee during the national anthem if they feel the need to get a point across. The professional athletes who want to fight for injustice and the communities that are being fought for would support this solution because now there is attention being brought to them, so now there are more solutions to most likely be in effect in those oppressed communities. Most audiences would not support the solution, along with President Trump because they believe that during the national anthem is not the time to protest and athletes should just play the sport.
This solution can account for the opponents concerns by giving them more to think about and that “what if” factor for example if the roles were reversed so that people would be able to see the cause behind protests. The world would be a better place if the solution is implemented because now those communities that are being oppressed will now have more people fighting for them and the more people that you have by your side, the more likely the government will help resolve the problems. Also, it will lessen the amount of racist acts that occur in sports at the collegiate and professional level which means all athletes will be treated as equals with the same amount of respect.
Work Cited
- Agyemang, K., & Singer, J. (2014). Race in the Present Day: NBA Employees Sound Off on Race and Racism. Journal of African American Studies, 18(1), 11-32. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/43525532
- Bieler, D. (2019, February 5). Colin Kaepernick thanks Rihanna for her Super Bowl boycott. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 7, 2019, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/02/05/colin-kaepernick-thanks-rihanna-her-super-bowl-boycott/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.af77b1e11571
- Blowin’ in the Wind [Recorded by B. Dylan]. (1962). On Blowin’ in the Wind [MP3]. Manhattan: John. H. Hammond. (1962, July 9)
- Cheeks, G., & Carter-Francique, A. R. (2015). HBCUs Versus HWCUs: A Critical Examination of Institutional Distancing Between Collegiate Athletic Programs. Race, Gender & Class, 22(1-2), 23-35. Retrieved February 15, 2019, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26505321.
- Horger, M. (2017, October 16). Top Ten Origins: Sports Protests. Retrieved February 11, 2019, from http://origins.osu.edu/connecting-history/top-ten-origins-sports-protests
- King, M. L., Jr. (1963, April 16). Letter from Birmingham Jail [Letter]. Birmingham, Alabama.
- Lapchick, R. (2018, January 12). Racist Acts in Sports Were on the Rise in 2017. Retrieved from http://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/22041345/racism-continued-rear-ugly-head-sports-2017
- Lipsyte, R. (2018, July 12). Donald Trump’s War On Black Athletes. The Nation.
- Seifert, K. (2018, May 24). How National Anthem Rules Differ Across Sports Leagues. Retrieved from http://www.espn.com//story/_/id/20848575/rules-national-anthem-differ-sports-leagues
- Smith, J. (2009). 'It's Not Really My Country'': Lew Alcindor and the Revolt of the Black Athlete. Journal of Sport History, 36(2), 223-244. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/26405188'
- T. (2019, January 25). Entertainers Address Social Injustice Issues at Super Bowl. The Washington Post. Retrieved February 7, 2019, from https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2019/01/25/arts/ap-fbn-super-bowl-social-injustice.html
- Wright, J. (2016). Be Like Mike?: The Black Athlete's Dilemma. Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, 4(2), 1-19. doi:10.2979/spectrum.4.2.01
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