America the Beautiful?

As an avid fan of football it never ceases to amaze me when I watch the national anthem being sung at NFL games.  Okay, part of me wishes that Canadians showed that much national pride, but then I think we saw that on display during the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, when the Canadian anthem would spontaneously break out on public transit.  Pride in one's country is one thing, but it is most surprising when I see it among American black players.  Often, Americans talk as though they have the exclusive market on freedom and opportunity for all.  This comes as a surprise to Canadians, Brits, as well as many other countries in the world that enjoy as much freedom as any American.  You do not need to be a world power to experience freedom. 

No, the reason I feel surprised though is that for the past months, it seems that every week the evening news carries stories of racial tensions.  When I read novels set in the U.S. south during the nineteen fifties, sixties and seventies, they are filled with stories of radical, racial prejudice rednecks whose views of anyone who is not "white" can turn my stomach, and even though most of these stories are fiction, they do reflect the extreme injustice and deplorable abuse suffered by many blacks and others during this time.  We can pretend that this ended, but the news reminds us that those attitudes are still just below the surface.  Those rednecks did not suddenly disappear in the nineties or the current century.  Some lived on, or passed their prejudice on to their children who live today.  the KKK is still alive in the south.

Ferguson, Missouri has been in the news lately for the way the local police, made up mostly of whites, appear to unfairly harass and abuse citizens purely based on the colour of their skin.  New York City police also made the news lately, due to a video showing an unarmed black man being hauled to the ground and dying from the pressure put on his head, just because he did not respond as quickly as police would like and was resisting their physical accosting of him.  Last year a supposedly unarmed youth in Florida was killed.  These are the stories that make international news, but the U.S. cities all have large ghettos filled with blacks, Hispanics, Mexicans, etc. where violence is rampant.  I once worked with a fellow who grew up in such a neighbourhood in New Orleans. He told us stories of how children went out every day, not knowing if they might get killed intentionally or by some stray bullet.  Hearing gunshots was a regular occurrence. He escaped because he became a football player and was recruited by some university.  In fact, many, (I hesitate to say most as I have nothing to back that statement up), professional football, baseball and basketball players are products of these terrible conditions, and sports was their means of escape. 

Given this background, and the fact that while great strides have been taken in the battle against racial prejudice, it has not been eliminated, and continues to fester in many areas of the U.S., I am nevertheless surprised that so many black athletes see America as the greatest country in the world and choke up when the anthem is played.  They were able to rise above their circumstances because of their athletic abilities, but many of their brothers and sisters do not get that chance.  Of course, many blacks, Hispanics, etc. did not come from these underprivileged neighbourhoods, but I dare say that if you examined the makeup of American poor neighbourhoods, people of colour would make up a very disproportionate share of the population.

I also do not want to be smug and suggest that Canada is fee of prejudice.  Ask any First Nations Canadian.  However, I doubt that if the CFL was made up of a large number of aboriginals, they would clutch their heart and tear up at our anthem.