National Anthem protests: Something new

By Ed Piper

I'm one who's big on standing during the National Anthem to show respect to the flag and our country before sports contests and in other settings.

Even during my activist days in college and my early 20's--when our mess in Vietnam still hung over our country--I always carried that part that my parents had instilled in me to honor the flag. I always thought it looked slovenly and lazy, rather than powerful, when people slouched during the anthem, or even more common, when they failed to doff their caps at Major League Baseball games I attended.

You see, my parents and their generation had faced the Nazism of Hitler, my dad serving as a 19-year-old navigator in a B-24 Liberator (I have only put the identification of the actual plane he flew in together in recent years) that flew missions from Brindisi and Bari, Italy, and dropped bombs on Nazi Germany during the second half of World War II. Mom and Dad met near the end of the war, got engaged after three weeks in the whirlwind atmosphere of the times, and lived happily together until the day my father died of cancer nearly 33 years later.

So, I have not been real thrilled about the NFL players kneeling during the anthem the past two seasons. But today I read something new: Derek Carr, quarterback of the Raiders, reached his arm over to the shoulder of teammate Khalil Mack before last weekend's game, in a show of solidarity.

I only did a quick read, but something about Carr's gesture as a white athlete to show support of his African-American teammate in these times of so much turmoil in the land resonated with me. In fact, Carr explained that he was aware the eyes of young America are on him and other professional athletes, and rather than a protest, he wanted to show that a white teammate and a black teammate can support each other, even "love" each other. You don't hear too many macho male athletes express their actions using vulnerable words like "love" for a teammate.

It sounds pretty positive to me. Our president's words about the violence in Charlottesville are problematic, with white supremacists, KKK members, and neo-Nazis taking part in the event that led to the violence. Somebody pointed out the irony of our having fought Nazi Germany to defeat Hitler from taking over the world in World War II--my dad having compatriots wounded and killed around him, though he never told us stories before passing away way back in 1979 at the tender age of 54--and yet trying to protect the supposed freedoms of neo-Nazis spewing the same views while carrying weapons in Charlottesville. That is insane.