When we show respect for the anthem and the flag we
are not showing respect for people we are showing respect for laws, the system
that protects, among many other things, our right to protest, to peaceably
assemble and speak out — as NFL players are doing.
They do this without the risk of being thrown in
jail, as in other systems they might.
Here it's just a matter of etiquette where they are legally free not to
stand and I am legally free to call it bad manners and confused thinking.
It's a deep kind of confusion with a long
history. Socrates' friends were
confused when they wanted him to escape prison because the people who put him
there were so wrong. Socrates
won't do it because it would break, and therefore injure, the laws of Athens,
which he has enjoyed the benefits of.
Those who convicted him wronged him, made him a victim, as many of our
juries do to people, but they were acting within the law, as our juries
are. Socrates patiently shows his
friends that he is "not a victim of laws but of men."
As many rightfully aggrieved blacks in our day
are. As, to my understanding, the
blacks in Jefferson were. The laws
about police behavior were OK; the still-white police force in a majority black
community simply hadn't caught up to them.
It would be much easier to avoid confusion if the
victimized would avoid the
expression "institutionalized racism." That's a big charge (it takes in our laws), it's much harder
to nail down (I have yet to see that done), and it shouldn't be made without
specifying the institution and showing how it is racist. Leave it vague and you
let careless readers think their victimization is much deeper than it is. And much harder to end.
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