When Kneeling Was Good

Kneeling is all the rage these days.  That is to say, it’s causing rage in a lot of people.  What Colin Kaepernick started 13 months ago - first with sitting during the national anthem then with kneeling - has become a movement, and some of the fans don’t like it.  Apparently, neither does the president, calling the protestors names that disparage their mothers.

Now, as a church person, kneeling has always been considered a good thing.  It is one of the two primary positions of prayer, the other being standing with arms upraised to heaven.  Kneeling is a sign of humility before the awesomeness of God.  It is a sign that we understand our smallness, that we know we don’t deserve what we ask, but that we trust God’s goodness and therefore ask freely.

That may not be what Kaepernick had in mind when he took a knee.  Nevertheless, it is a sign not of disrespect but of submission.  He submits to the US Constitution and its promises, demanding nothing less or more than what we are told is our right.  His kneeling protests a reality that people of color in this country have lived with for centuries.  If you are black, you have all the challenges of every other American, but with added burdens.  

One of those burdens is the simple ability to walk down a street or drive a car without being harassed.  As a white person, I know the mundane freedom of not being followed wherever I go in a store, of not being stopped on a regular basis so that my right to be in a certain neighborhood can be challenged.  I know the freedom of not having to worry about my kid being shot by a cop on a daily basis.

We white folks think of the police as our friends.  That has not been the experience of African Americans since, well, ever.  There has literally never been a time in American history when the majority of black Americans could trust that encounters with the police would ever lead to anything but grief.  Kids with BB guns get shot without so much as a warning - but he was a bad kid and the cop was scared because the gun looked real.  Handcuffed but unseatbelted prisoners die in police custody - but they deserved it.  

Every time an unarmed black person is shot by the police (even the upstanding businessman who was in his own driveway with his own car and obeyed the police officers every command but still got shot), there is an outcry that they wouldn’t have been shot if they didn’t do something wrong.  Even the little girl asleep on her sofa when the police raided her apartment (they got the wrong address, so it wasn’t even the home they were looking for) and shot her dead.  

And then people are outraged when they see black people (on Facebook, I saw them referred to as “animals”) jumping up and down on top of a police cruiser during protests against yet another acquittal of yet another cop who shot yet another unarmed black guy.

Usually, when protests of police brutality and other forms of discrimination get noticed, white people (okay, not 100% white people, but predominantly) become outraged and point to actual crimes committed by blacks.  They will mention that most shootings of black people are perpetrated by black people.  They will point out that many black people shot by cops were in fact committing crimes.  And they will go to the news to show just how many black people are involved in crime.

But what they are doing is called misdirection.  Because it’s irrelevant if most black shooting victims are shot by blacks.  Most white shooting victims are shot by whites, too.  Furthermore, more whites commit crimes (of a violent nature) than blacks, both in real numbers and by percentage of population, yet it’s the black ones who get shot at a much higher rate.  And even though whites account for most of the crime, blacks get convicted at a higher rate and for longer terms.  I’m not going to quote the stats here - but they are out there, available with a quick Google search for those who want.

So, kneeling at a football game - and now at baseball games, concerts and other venues - is a protesting a very real injustice, an injustice which flies in the face of everything our US Constitution is supposed to stand for.  It seems to be a particularly patriotic action.

Firing people for kneeling during the national anthem is exactly the opposite of patriotic.  It is the action of a despot.  Granted, since most of those kneeling are NFL players who work for their team owners, their owners do technically have the right to demand that they don’t kneel.

I’d like to see them try.

The owners won’t - and in fact, some of them have taken a knee, too.  They won’t because if they did, they would lose all of their players, or at least so many that the league would have no meaning.  Remember, many of these players are black.  They know what it’s like to be treated as third-class citizens all their lives.  Now that they have some standing and resources to support themselves, this is a way to finally say, “I’ve had enough.”

As one Vietnam veteran wrote (whose father fought in World War II, and whose son fought in Afghanistan), the right to protest peacefully is exactly what our soldiers fought and died for.  If that right is not protected, then what was the point of fighting at all?

For those who rage at the kneeling, perhaps they should ask themselves what they’re really angry about.  I’ve been to ballgames and watch people in the stands chatting, checking their phones, or eating hotdogs during the anthem.  No outrage there.

I’ve seen Nazis and KKK marching down the streets Charlottesville, surrounding synagogues,  and attacking people - no outrage there, though there was plenty rage reserved for Antifa and Black Lives Matter (as if they were the same thing), for stepping between peaceful protestors and attacking Nazis.

So, truly, what is the anger about?  Disrespecting soldiers?  Hardly.  Many soldiers support them.

Disrespecting the constitution?  Hardly.  They’re fighting for the Constitution to be finally respected.

What they’re really angry about is that somebody is publicly and effectively calling out our society’s systematic disenfranchisement of specific groups, most notably African Americans.  What those who rage really want is for black people to shut up and go on quietly allowing cops to arrest them disproportionately, allowing courts to convict them disproportionately, and allowing other forms of ongoing discrimination to continue.

But of course, that should not happen.  What should happen is that those who do not experience these forms of injustice ought to take some time to put themselves in the shoes of those who live with this crap every day.  

Then, maybe, they should kneel.  If not in solidarity with those who protest injustice, then in humility before God, begging forgiveness for the injustices we continue to perpetuate.  That would be good kneeling.