Football players genuflecting in respectful supplication

An appalling cloud of distortion has been spread over the genuflection by some black football players during the playing of the National Anthem at NFL games. Their kneeling has been portrayed by President Trump and his allies as an expression of disrespect for the flag, the military, the Anthem or whatever. I will not go beyond calling attention to the venality and cowardice of the NFL owners in their attempt to stifle the players’ First Amendment rights. I suspect this will ultimately be thrashed out in court.

Genuflection has been universally recognized not as an expression of disdain, rejection or hostility by anyone. Rather it is interpreted generally as an expression of respectful supplication. These men wish to point out that, while unarmed black men and boys are shot down by police all over this land for reasons which are hard to see as credible, the lyric sung at these games extolling a “land of the free” contradicts an ugly reality, and needs serious address by the national community. Patriotism must include an aspiration for what the country can become with respect to equal justice for all and a recognition of the work yet to be done to arrive at that goal. Herbert Ross Lyme

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