Brittney Griner Changes Her Tune on ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ Stands for National Anthem

With memories of her stint in a Russian penal colony fresh in the star WNBA basketball player’s mind, Brittany Griner hears freedom in America’s National Anthem. By choosing to stand for it, she is sending a message to other athletes that pre-game protests have run their course.In 2020, Ms. Griner told the Arizona Republic that she was “not going to be out there” for the song and the league “should not play” it before female athletes demonstrate good fundamentals in the game.“Black people didn’t have rights at that point,” Ms. Griner said of 1931, when Francis Scott Key’s lyrics were adopted as the National Anthem. “It’s hard respecting a song that didn’t even represent all Americans when it was first made.” Many objected to her stance, but she declared she would remain off the court until tipoff.Since then, Ms. Griner spent 10 months in Russian custody after authorities discovered vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage. With the war in Ukraine raging, Moscow was eager to use her as a pawn.In the Sun last December, I outlined the deal to exchange Ms. Griner for a Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, known as “the Angel of Death.” While warning the trade set a dangerous precedent, the Phoenix Mercury center’s desire to regain her freedom was the natural human yearning respected by the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.Had experiencing a totalitarian state that seeks to resurrect the evils of communism changed her perspective? The BBC reported in 2015 that “prisoner abuse is part of the Soviet legacy in Russia,” and one method is blaring the Stalinist-era Soviet National Anthem — which replaced the Internationale in 1944 and which President Putin brought back in 2000 — and other “good Soviet Songs,” according to the country’s prison service.Authorities told Baikal Media that they play the music to stop inmates from talking to one another or to anyone outside the razor wire. Furthermore, in 2016, Russia passed legislation making it a crime to “insult” the country’s anthem or symbols.America does not compel respect for its anthem — played at sporting events since World War I — nor require the Pledge of Allegiance for students, as upheld by the Supreme Court in 1943 in the case of West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette.Ms. Griner would be no less American for resuming her protest in that tradition, exercising her right to dissent after months of being compelled, in the style of George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” to suffer propaganda via speakers without off switches.Last week, all eyes were on Ms. Griner’s first game back, and the center gave her answer, standing on the court at silent attention for the anthem. Since it was the preseason, reporters asked if she’d be there again when the regular season begins on Friday.“Hearing the National Anthem,” Ms. Griner said in her post-game press conference, “it definitely hit different,” likening it to the song playing as American flags are unfurled during Olympic medal ceremonies. “Being here right now, today, it definitely hits different.”AP/Matt YorkHer response reminded me of another athlete, Marshall “Major” Taylor, an African-American cyclist who — around the time the anthem was adopted — wrote in his memoir of being “thrilled as I heard the band strike up the Star-Spangled Banner” at an event in Canada.“My national anthem took on a new meaning for me from that moment,” Taylor said. “I never felt so proud to be an American before, and indeed, I felt even more American at that moment than I ever felt in America.”Taylor faced racism at every turn, once losing a race for lack of food as no restaurant would serve him. Yet he refused to let bigots deny him his place in the American family, hearing his people’s struggle in Key’s words of defiance against tyranny during the War of 1812.Ms. Griner still sees things about America she wishes to change, and she may again lobby for them by abstaining from the anthem, but after enduring Russian imprisonment, she may find that embracing the song better persuades her fellow citizens — and that then, her arguments hit them different, too.

Brittney Griner Changes Her Tune on ‘Star-Spangled Banner,’ Stands for National Anthem

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