Comments on: National Football League Anthem Protests

By: Carli Weimer

Carli Weimer — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 15:55:20 +0000

I also wrote a blog post on the protests that have been taking place in the NFL. It is very disheartening to see the way that players are scrutinized for standing up for what they believe in. I played field hockey all throughout high school, and I considered my team and my coach like a second family. I could not even imagine what it would have been like to hear my coach to make such insensitive comments towards myself or other members of my team. Most players want to have a good relationship with their coach, but I imagine it would be harder to play for a person who sees you in a demeaning way. Being apart of a team also involves trust and being open to others views and standpoints.

By: Tovia Marinstein

Tovia Marinstein — Mon, 09 Apr 2018 17:09:43 +0000

It can become tricky to navigate the ways sports are talked about in American culture. People often essentialize the players, holding them up as tokens to demonstrate the success of a minority group. This is actually harmful, as it objectifies the players, rendering them as entertainment, and limits the success of an entire group of people to a particular domain. The rhetoric of the coach that you pointed out here is really interesting to me, as it seems to represent a view that the coach’s players were his property, a comment that echoes chattel slavery. I can’t imagine being part of a team where my coach’s myopic understanding of my history allowed him or her to refer to me in such a demeaning way.