When I think
of the lyrics, …the Land of the Free and
the Home of the Brave, I think of the men and women, known and unknown, who
survived and fought for the right to be treated as equal citizens in the eyes
of the law and in the hearts of their fellow Americans. Rev. Dr. King, of
course, and Ida B. Wells and Cesar Chavez and so many others. The slaves who
survived, the Chinese railroad workers who endured, the Jews who preserved, the
Filipinos and Hmong and name a country, name an ethnicity, name a people who
were once treated as less than and/or taken for granted and whose condition has
now, (no matter how slightly), improved.
When I see
the Stars & Stripes, I have no problem standing for these people. I have no
problem standing to acknowledge where we are and how far we have come as a
nation.
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Many of us
still kneel to pray, to humble ourselves before our God.
It is still,
as far as I'm aware, the posture folks assume when proposing marriage to their beloved.
Reminiscent of
what we imagine of medieval knights of old, the posture is not the issue.
There is
nothing disrespectful about kneeling.
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In the
presence of my country's flag, it is also right to honor and remember of those
who may not have survived the cruelties of the United States. For the Trail of
Tears and other massacres. For those unknowingly subjected to government sterilization.
For nationwide Jim Crow laws. For the soldiers who fought abroad for the freedom
of others and came home to either derision, second class citizenship, or both.
For law enforcement officers shot in the line of duty, or murdered because of
their uniform. For civilians killed by law enforcement, civilians who were not instructed
to drop a weapon or given enough time to comply, who were shot in the back, who
died for not opening the car door quickly enough.
To honor these
people, it would not bother me to kneel.
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At this
point, if you're still upset, you may have an issue with the audacity to use so
public a forum to silently proclaim America's continuing imperfections. There's a proper way to protest, you may
insist, forgetting that the nature of protest is never proper, that it is a
disruption of the status quo. Or you may feel it's unpatriotic, forgetting that
love of country is not simply embracing where it is but also but pushing it to
be better.
At this
point, if you're still upset, it's not about the posture. It's not about the
kneeling. It would be disingenuous to claim so.
