Do we need the national anthem for sports events?
A high school boys basketball game delivered an interesting start last week: no national anthem.
Nobody cared about the anthem not being played or sung as players moved toward center court.
No accusations unfurled in a major flap about nationalism or patriotism.
People claim love of country and its alleged ideals simply by standing or removing head gear then live the rest of their day delivering hateful rhetoric about African Americans, Jews, Italians, Puerto Ricans, etc. while pledging a national “kick ‘em while they’re down” meme.
Sporting events do not require pomp and circumstance about wars, bombs and rockets red glare. Plus, a boy-girl doubleheader basketball event does not need two anthems. If schools must play the anthem then just play it once, please.
Right about now McCarthyists have set in motion an investigation regarding my affiliation with Ruskies and whether personal meetings with Russian agents occurred. (No collusion).
Call me the Black Russian if your heart desires but this nation, supposedly under God, indivisible and allegedly engaged in liberty and justice for all, has failed to make good on promises regarding opportunity, equality and access to freedom.
In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech which touched on the United States’ default on pledged assistance. Dr. King used an economic metaphor to describe a nation in “default.”
“Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds,’” King said.
Standing for the national anthem or Pledge of Allegiance remains a symbolic gesture rather than a promise to uphold our desires for fairness.
People who stand against racism, who stand for gender equality, who stand against hatred, who stand for justice, change not only their immediate landscape but impact the world.
We should rethink the playing of the national anthem for sporting events not as a means of disrespect, simply as a way to remove politics from athletics.
Borrowing from Shakespeare, our national anthem is “full of sound and fury, signifying (almost) nothing.”
Skip the national anthem.
Play ball!
L.A. Parker is a Trentonian columnist.