Boston’s Jaylen Brown wants to talk about the national anthem

Boston Celtics star shooting guard wants you to learn about the U.S. national anthem, and how it relates to racial justice.

Boston Celtics star shooting guard Jaylen Brown wants to talk to you about the U.S. national anthem.

Brown, Boston’s most cerebral player and one of the most-committed players to fighting for social justice on the team and in the NBA, has been making the most of the league’s commitment to providing a platform for racial justice and equity as a condition of the Disney restart.

That agreement, between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) that the Cal-Berkeley product is a Vice President of, has thrust the normally-silenced political side of player’s lives directly into the spotlight, their thoughts interwoven into the fabric of the restart itself.

Brown is appreciative for the extension of his already-considerable platform in that regard, and spoke at length about after Sunday’s win over the Portland Trail Blazers.

“I want to address the national anthem,” he began. “I want to show my solidarity to the NBA and [Commissioner] Adam Silver for allowing us to be able to peacefully protest some of the injustice that we felt.

“I’m proud of the Boston Celtics as well,” Brown added.

“Angela Davis once said that racism is so dangerous, not because of individual actors, because it’s deeply embedded in apparatus. I think about that quote a lot when I think about the national anthem, which was written by Francis Scott Key, who was a slave owner. We’ll be talking about the national anthem; we don’t really talk a lot about the third verse that was written, which addresses slavery.”

That verse, for the curious, is a real one, and really problematic.

The unsavory topic as much as changing times and perhaps an interest in brevity have led to the omission of the verses — but the following words are indeed still technically part of the national anthem of the United States:

“And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country, should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave.”

While a little confusing because of the semi-archaic way of speaking, what Key was saying was that slaves who rebelled in hope of freedom when the British invaded ought to be killed.

Not exactly an exemplar of Key’s or our best selves, to say the least.

“Racism is so deeply embedded in our country, that people don’t even flinch [to hear such language]; it kind of is what it is,” added Brown with a tinge of frustration evident in his voice.

“It’s not the protests; it’s not the police officers and police brutality — it is, all that is important — but it’s also the framework of systemic oppression.”

And systems are built as much from words and ideas as they are from concrete structures, practices and people.

Even if we merely excise that part of the anthem in recognition of its problematic nature, or continue choosing to ignore that unsavory aspect of our history, it still serves as an example par excellence of just how invisible the institutions of racial inequity are interwoven into the fabric of our institutions so deeply they have become invisible to most.

“[Systemic oppression] started with the national anthem, so I think being able to take a knee is appropriate, and it may not even really be enough –but I’m proud of the NBA,” concluded Brown.

Considering the genuine commitment the league has made to helping right these historic wrongs, so are we.

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