From Montana to Kaepernick
During my earlier days in California, I was walking through the inner areas of our apartment complex and spotted probably eight or ten elementary-aged boys playing football. They were from all ethnic heritages, Indian, Chinese, African, Persian, a couple of muts like me—there was even a redhead with freckles. I assumed they were all American, despite the distinguishing features of their geneticrecombinations. This was something that might not have been evident to my mother’s generation. When we took her to site see in San Francisco, she remarked, “Look at all the foreigners!” My husband and I gently explained that most of the people she spoke of as foreign were probably American citizens. I don’t think she quite absorbed what we were saying. She was too overwhelmed by the myriad differences between San Francisco and her own stomping grounds. The city itself qualified as a foreign country to her.
Back at our apartment complex however, even football fans from my mother’s generation might have gleaned an important clue from the boys lined up at their imaginary fifty yard line—for printed on almost every one of their t-shirts was the number 16 and across their shoulders the name “Montana.” Not too much later Mr. Montana was at Candlestick Park for a baseball game when an earthquake struck. He grabbed the kid nearest him, carried the boy to the safety of a doorframe and together they road the rolling waves of motion until the earthquake ended. When I heard this on the evening news, I thought, no wonder all those boys wanted to be like Cool Joe..
Today NASCAR has banned the Confederate flag and Mississippi is considering the possibility of removing it from their state colors. I find myself absolutely giddy about the NASCAR decision and I have to ask myself whether I heard it correctly that Mississippi—Mississippi—is considering the removal of the confederate flag from its own state flag? I would not have thought this could happen in my life time. My great grandmother, christened a few days after the inauguration of the president of the confederacy, was named Jemima Jefferson Davis Beaureguard Brown and yet, I have dreamed of the day the Confederate flag would exist only in history books and museums. Bubba Wallace is very likely aware of what he has accomplished for African American children. I hope he knows what he has done for confused white kids.
And someday, maybe I will walk past a field of children scrimmaging—playing American football again—and they will be wearing jerseys with the number 7. “Kaepernick” will sprawl across their shoulders because they will understand that he exercised his rights as an American and joined the flow of what our forebears set in motion—that he gave us a kick in the right direction. Although many people reacted as if he were invoking an earthquake, bringing a danger with unpredictable and devastating consequences, I believe, in truth, he was showing us a doorway, not just to stand in, but to move through—into a different kind of life—a new kind of American life, something those who created our form of government would probably be afraid of, but nevertheless, a direct descendent of their vision.