WNBA player Brittney Griner has changed her mind about standing for the national anthem before games. Like some other athletes, she stopped standing for the anthem in 2020 as a form of protest against the U.S. After being imprisoned for ten months in Russia on trumped-up charges of drug smuggling, she’s back on the court in the U.S. and standing for Old Glory.
Jemele Hill records Griner’s reasoning for the Atlantic:
“One thing that’s good about this country is our right to protest,” Griner said after the game when I asked her about the issue. “You have a right to be able to speak out, question, to challenge, and do all these things. [After] what I went through, it just means a little bit more to me now. I was literally in a cage and could not stand the way I wanted to … and a lot of other situations. Just being able to hear my national anthem, see my flag, I definitely wanted to stand.”
She’s an incredible athlete, and it’s great that she’s back in the U.S., safe and sound. That’s true even though the U.S. released a despicable Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, in exchange. The negative diplomatic consequences of that swap are a separate question from the desirability of getting American citizens wrongfully imprisoned abroad back to the U.S.
Griner’s experience at the hands of an authoritarian state seems to have changed her perspective on the flag, what it means, and why Americans honor it. Welcome back to the land of the free and the home of the brave.