We can try over and over to divorce our cultural institutions from our political ones, but the fact of the matter is that we’re never going to be successful. American history is a history of parts, and no part is truly independent of the others — they’re all connected. Women’s history intersects with economic history. Social history intersects with presidential history. Black history intersects with medical history, and so on and so forth — the list is endless.
I guess you can say that our politics are always going to inform our culture and vice versa. It’s been that way for a long time, and I doubt that’s going to change anytime soon. Songs have been political since the beginning of time. Plays dating back to those of William Shakespeare have poked fun at leaders, whether they be esteemed or deficient. And, what I think most people forget nowadays, our sports games and athletes have always been political.
Think about it: Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the Miracle on Ice hockey game, Colin Kaepernick — no matter the year, the context, the negative or the positive connotation — our sports have always been intertwined with our politics. Often times, it’s intentional: athletes are well aware of their platform, and use it to make judgments and even level critiques at world around them. Other times, we make a sport political, and a game becomes larger than the game itself, informing less about the strength and determination of a specific team and more about the strength and determination of the American identity.
I get it. You turn on your TV and watch a sports game to unwind and forget, but instead find yourself face to face with a bunch of players kneeling during the national anthem to make a statement, or with Jemele Hill calling your president a white supremacist, or with two guys throwing up the black panther salute. That’s not what you were expecting. That’s not what you wanted. And quite frankly, if you were looking for a political discussion, you’d turn on CNN, Fox or MSNBC.
Here’s the thing, though — it’s naive to assume that sports exist in a vacuum, independent of what’s going on around them. It’s wrong to maintain that athletes or commentators ought to shut up — they are U.S. citizens awarded the same liberties you and I have, the only difference being that when they say something, it’s louder and reaches more people. Sports are fundamentally American (there is, after all, nothing more American than cracker jacks and baseball). They shape the way we look at our cities, our collectivity, ourselves. They bring us together, give us something to cheer for, give us something to care about. Sports exist in an ever-evolving American system, a system that engages with them regularly. They are well within their right to engage back with it.
What happened to Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and what is happening to Colin Kaepernick and Jemele Hill is disgusting. It’s built on the expectation that once we pay someone to do something for us, they had better be grateful, and they dare not do anything beyond the supposed purview of that job. Not to mention, of course, the fact that these are relatively renowned and sometimes affluent black Americans who are really just “looking for attention,” because it’s inconceivable for people with wealth or fame to face injustices.
To see our athletes like this is dangerous. They have opinions and they have every right in the world to express them as they see fit. Yes, they are strong, fast and fit, but they are more than that too, and when you teach them that they aren’t, you’re breeding a particular class of empty people unengaged with the world because they don’t think it’s important. Even further, when you divorce sports from politics, you’re taking them out of the context in which they arose, a context they often depend on. You’re making them meaningless, soulless and empty — and quite frankly, those are not the kind of games I want to watch.
