One of the institutions that are enshrined in the American
mythos/dream what have you, is the family. It is often presented as the non
plus ultra, the repository of all vultures and just plain wonderful.
Of course real families are not all like that, many real
families are dysfunctional with problems including Drug and Alcohol abuse, physical
violence, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse that can scar psyches and lives for
years.
One of the persistent behavior patterns all dysfunctional families
are that they build a wall of denial around the family, things must appear
normal to the outside world.
And the one great sin here is if one of the family members,
by action or speaking, lets the world know that things are not fine that Dad is
drinking or Mom hits the kids or gets hit or someone has been abused by an uncle
all hell breaks loose. But it’s the person who speaks up is the one silenced.
Which brings us to a couple of weeks about when during the
playing of the Star Spangled Banner at the start of an exhibition football game
one of the players on the 49er’s sat on the bench. When asked why he said it was in protest. His
protest was that unarmed black people were being killed by the police without reason
or without any consequence to the officers. It was a symbolic act saying that this country
is not living up to its ideals with respect to its black citizens especially when
it is gunning them down for little or no reason.
And all hell broke loose – you would have thought he’d
publicly advocated Satanism, was wearing a leather coat made from the skin of
babies all the while pissing on the graves of the unknown soldiers. There were demands that he be cut from the
team. That he be made to pay a fine. His shirt meantime has been bought in large
numbers by folks and set on fire (videos posted on you tube of course) and filled
the airwaves with angry statements about how he has dishonored the flag and the
brave men and women who died defending it.
Now let us remember what he did: he did not stand up for the national anthem. Id’ posit that from the intensity and vicious
nature of the response the fellow has touched a nerve, and a guilty one at
that. Someone who for example sat during the national anthem to protest government
suppression of evidence of UFO’s would at most get called a few names and laughed
at.
The anger – and it is real – is not because what he said
wasn’t true –but it is precisely because it is true and strikes a blow at what has been described as white brittleness about
race. The level of hysteria attached to
the response and their attempts to silence one man argues for a deep and pathological
level of denial about the role of race in this country.
Our original sin keeps on giving.
