The Heritage arrives right on time
Howard Bryant’s new book, The Heritage, reads like a thorough, tough-minded analysis of these last few turbulent weeks in sports, race and politics.
When NFL owners voted last week to force players on the field to stand during the pregame anthem, league commissioner Roger Goodell told reporters that football fans wanted players to participate in staged acts of patriotism. Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump called players taking knee during pre-game anthems to protest police brutality “sons of bitches,” and last week he told Fox News players who choose not to “stand proudly” during the national anthem should leave the U.S.
While the new rule earned criticism from supporters of players like former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began opting out of pre-game anthems in 2016, the league imposed it to appease both Trump and conservative fans furious players would ever question the connection between pro sports, law enforcement, the military and performative patriotism.
Bryant doesn’t just question that premise in The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America and The Politics of Patriotism. The ESPN senior writer cross-examines assumptions about the roles of race and patriotism in the spectacle of pro sports, connects Kaepernick to a line of AfricanAmerican activist-athletes that stretches back to Jackie Robinson, and calls on Kaepernick’s peers to devote their influence to the fight against racism.
Publisher Beacon Press couldn’t have known the book would hit stores just as the NFL rule propelled race, sports and nationalism back into the news cycle. That The Heritage so thoroughly deconstructs the current controversy highlights Bryant’s insight, foresight and strong writing. Bryant saw where trends were headed, and when they arrived, The Heritage was already there to help make sense of them.
The central premise of Bryant’s book is that AfricanAmerican athletes — especially superstars — have a responsibility to leverage fame and influence to advance the fight for racial equality, even if it costs them personally. That dual role as athlete and activist is the heritage from which the book derives its title, and Bryant points out that sacrifices made by athletes like Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood made today’s widely integrated pro sports and nine-figure contracts possible.
Bryant writes that many African-American sports stars who followed in Robinson’s wake eagerly accepted activism as a part of their jobs, and urges contemporary standouts, with bigger salaries and audiences than their forbears enjoyed, to rejoin the movement for U.S. racial equality.
For Bryant, it’s less a choice than a duty.
“You owe, because you received,” goes the refrain appearing several times throughout the book’s 241 pages.
Athletes like Kaepernick or outspoken Trump critic LeBron James seem jarring to a sports public that grew up with black athletes like Michael Jordan, who made political neutrality a pillar in his lucrative personal brand. But in The Heritage, Bryant reminds readers that African-American athletes were engaged in activism before the deracinated corporate pitchman archetype — starting with O.J. Simpson and peaking with Tiger Woods — became the kind of Black athlete fans, teams and the media expected.
Bryant juxtaposes Simpson, Jordan and Woods with athletes like Muhammad Ali, who famously lost his heavyweight title and risked prison rather than accept induction into the U.S. Army in 1967.
The next year, 200-metre champ Tommie Smith and bronze medallist John Carlos thrust their black-gloved fists skyward on the medal podium at the 1968 Olympics in solidarity with the civil rights struggle at home.
Bryant points out all those men lost money and endured bitter backlash when they stood on principle, but none regretted their activism.
Just as Simpson’s emergence disrupted the Black athlete-asactivist tradition, Bryant argues that the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks created the current sports landscape, where black NFLers who fight racism are muzzled by their league and labeled traitors by the president.
Bryant charts the sports industry’s gradual transformation from a vehicle for post-9/11 healing to a stage where Americans celebrate law enforcement and military might. He also traces the current emphasis on the pre-game anthem to 2009, when the NFL and the U.S. military entered a paid partnership that, for the first time, demanded players to appear on field during the Star-Spangled Banner — all while using the league’s reach to lure potential recruits.
Bryant connects all those ideas to create a portrait of a sports-industrial complex that punishes athletes like Kaepernick — out of the NFL since the end of the 2016 season — for two offences it considers unforgiveable: advocating for Black Americans’ rights and upsetting a corporate partnership.
If The Heritage has a blind spot, it might be the idea that Black athletes must — rather than should — become outspoken advocates for racial justice, only because that role might not suit every star’s personality. If activism resonates because it’s authentic, an anti-racism movement might not benefit from an O.J. Simpson-type superstar feigning wokeness to boost his personal brand.
But it’s a picayune criticism, akin to watching LeBron James put up a triple-double with 40 points and wondering why he didn’t score 50.
A minor gripe with the central conceit doesn’t diminish Bryant’s execution, or detract from a book that could prove essential in understanding this tumultuous moment at the intersection of sports, race, business and politics.