Courage takes many forms. Grace under pressure was Hemingway's phrase. The photograph below exemplifies that.
This weekend - Memorial Day - was first known as Decoration Day. Mourners of the Civil War dead decorated graves. Memorial Day became a national holiday in 1868 when General Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic - the Union Army - called for veterans and their communities to remember the dead soldiers and decorate their graves with flowers. But the first decoration day was a parade by 10,000 Black people in 1965 in Charleston, S.C.. They commemorated the Martyrs of the Race Course - the 257 Union soldiers who died in captivity.
Learning that put me in mind of Colin Kaepernick and the protests he ignited. And the bitter recriminations by Donald Trump before whom the NFL owners have now bowed. But there is more than fear of a bully that drives the owners. They know that they have encouraged a militarization of the NFL spectacle ; and that white Americans generally neither understand nor respect the grievances of Black Americans. This photograph of Colin Kaepernick and teammates captured for me the contradiction - the gulf between gladiators and spectators, between Black and white.
The NFL is 70% Black. The audiences overwhelmingly white and male. The photograph demonstrates the dignity of the players. In a prayerful posture they call for recognition of the grievances Black people suffer and have suffered. Trump and many in the stands see it as a repudiation of country - rather than as a demand that the country live up to its ideals.
The physical strength of the players - so dramatically apparent in the photograph - demonstrates their personal discipline. It is trite to say that sport builds character - but character is what we see in this image. But we know - really know - the terrible toll that this violent and wildly popular game inflicts on players. As we see now in thousands of veterans of football that toll is ghastly. The men who suffer from dementia and other consequences of gladiatorial combat should be remembered too on Memorial Day. - gwc
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