The N.F.L.’s Workplace Dodge

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/opinion/nfl-kneeling-anthem-.html

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Not such a long time ago, in this very galaxy, civil rights protesters were lectured about finding the “right time and place” for their demonstrations. It’s all well and good to express your opinion, they were told, but in-your-face street protests are disruptive and can harden opposition.

Or, as The Huntsville Times in Alabama put it, “the path to equal rights” is “down the road of moderation, mutual respect and minimal resort to mass perturbation.” In another editorial, it said “racial troubles” should be taken “off the streets and into the courts.”

That was 1965, after Sheriff Jim Clark’s uniformed thugs whipped, beat and gassed civil rights marchers in Selma.

Two years later, when Martin Luther King announced his opposition to the war in Vietnam, The New York Times editorial page lectured him about getting back to his place as a civil-rights leader. He should, The Times said, “direct the movement’s efforts in the most constructive and relevant way.”

Now comes the National Football League, dropping its pretense of supporting the broad aims of athletes who kneel during the national anthem to protest racial injustice and joining the chorus — led by President Trump — that they should find more respectful ways of voicing their anger.

In a masterpiece of euphemism, Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner, said the league’s leaders “care deeply about our players and respect their opinions and concerns about critical social issues.”

But, he said in a letter made public on Tuesday, “the controversy over the anthem is a barrier to having honest conversations and making real progress on the underlying issues.”

Everyone “involved in the game,” he said, “needs to come together on a path forward” and added, “In that spirit let’s resolve that next week, we will meet this challenge in a positive and unified way.”

There’s that pesky “path” again. But it’s not the only example of coded language in Goodell’s letter. “Positive and unified” means, “Do it my way.” (By the way, Goodell never once used the word “race.”)

Stephen Ross, an owner of the Miami Dolphins, who just a week ago supported the players’ protests, was even more mealy-mouthed. Because Trump decided to accuse the players of being unpatriotic, he said, the president “has changed that whole paradigm of what protest is.”

“I think it’s incumbent upon the players today, because of how the public is looking at it, to stand and salute the flag,” he said.

Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys, is threatening to bench players who don’t snap to attention for the playing of the national anthem. He said the playing field is a workplace, and the rules are that everyone stands for the anthem.

The workplace dodge is a common pretext for why punishing protesters does not violate their rights. Workplaces are different under the law from public spaces, but there is not a space much more public than a professional football field.

And try to imagine for a moment that you walked into work one day and your boss informed you that if you didn’t sing the national anthem, you’d be sent home. Or that you must sign an oath affirming your opposition to, say, the Communist Party. (See: McCarthy era.)

All of these arguments are tediously familiar. They were made against the suffragists and later all feminists, and against civil rights demonstrators, Vietnam War protesters, the Black Lives Matter movement, the American Indian Movement, the United Farm Workers. We are sympathetic with the cause, the argument goes, but don’t go overboard.

That’s how the subjects of protest talk when they don’t want to confront the protesters.

“Everyone here is frustrated by the process, and particularly the politics around this,” said Joe Lockhart, a spokesman for the N.F.L. He added, “There’s a strong feeling at every level that we ought to be getting back to football.”

People often argue that football games are no place for politics. That’s what they told Beyoncé in 2016 when she had the audacity to dress her dancers for the Super Bowl halftime show in outfits that recalled the — gasp — Black Panthers.

No one squawks, of course, except on aesthetic grounds, when Lee Greenwood sings “God Bless the U.S.A.” at a halftime show. And, in fact, singing the national anthem is in itself a political act.

But those are “acceptable” political acts that don’t annoy people on Sundays with “critical social issues.” Or as Jones put it, the mission of the Cowboys is to “to get people’s minds away from the troubled times.”