High Stakes Culture series tackles performative patriotism in Sports

A dozen University of Michigan students and staff attended the Institute for the Humanities’ discussion panel, “Olympic Patriotism V. Election Patriotism, Thursday evening. History lecturer Kate Wroblewski, sports management professor Ketra Armstrong and Silke Weineck, associate chair of the German Department, discussed connections between sports and patriotism as a part of the Institute’s High Stakes Culture Series, which explores divisive topics in American culture.

Moderator Matthew Countryman, associate professor of history and American culture, opened the event by introducing the key questions driving the discussion. 

“What is the relationship between sports and patriotism?” Countryman said. “What does it mean to feel part of something bigger than yourself? When is patriotism a good thing and when is it not a good thing?” 

Attendee Kristin Hass, professor of American culture, explained the historical context for the modern patriotic displays at American sporting events, such as the national anthem. 

“(When) we entered the era of an all volunteer military, when we needed people to really want to sign up, they weren’t drafted,” Hass said. “The United States Department of Defense got really invested in giving professional teams money for the flyovers and for playing the national anthem.”

Wroblewski explained that she views sports as a reflection of society, and in turn, they often serve as a form of protest.

“I’m interested in thinking through sports as a heuristic and what they tell us about larger social, economic, cultural, political phenomena,” Wroblewski said. “When I was thinking about the remarks that I was going to give, I wanted to set this up as a way of thinking through why sports become such a powerful vehicle for protest.”

Armstrong expressed that she sees sports as a reflection of American ideals because of their emphasis on rewarding ability and work. 

“Sport is supposed to be this beacon of what we value — meritocracy, coming together, working hard — all those great things that we can find in sport we don’t always find in American institutions,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong noted that despite the American values and diversity reflected in sports, those ideals do not necessarily translate into real-world experiences for Black Americans.

“We’re celebrated (in sports), but celebrate us in the boardroom, celebrate us in other spaces,” Armstrong said. “You see talent packaged in athletics, and that’s okay, but the same athletes’ mothers and brothers and sisters who are not athletes are getting a completely different kind of treatment in other arenas of America.” 

Armstrong said as a Black American, she often feels more strongly aligned with her racial identity over her national identity.

“When we look at sport, even during the Olympics, it’s so not about our country,” Armstrong said. “It’s about wanting Blackness to win. We want to see our community win. We want to see African countries win, because we know the struggle.” 

Weineck noted that her German cultural background gave her an atypical view on American sport patriotism.

“I’m still getting over my bafflement about how the U.S. does sports,” Weineck said. “There are so many things that seem very, very difficult to understand, such as trophies going to owners rather than team captains, national anthems being played at games where no nation is represented … Seems completely daft.” 

Attendee Asma Baban, an employee at the Institute for the Humanities, suggested that such displays of patriotism in sports might serve as a facade to cover American division.

“It just feels like a tool to make it seem like we’re getting along, like we’ve made progress, but we’re not,” Baban said. “It’s easier to present unity than it is to actually address that.”

LSA senior Lucian Van Fleet, an Institute for the Humanities intern who attended the event, told The Michigan Daily that his biggest takeaway from the event was that sports are a romanticized reflection of US society.

“Sports is a vessel for a lot of nasty things, things that we’re dealing with on every home front here in America, like the economics, the racism, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia,” said Van Fleet. “Sports is supposed to be this uniting force, but it’s actually just a representation of what America is, which is splintered and held together by duct tape.”

Daily Staff Reporter Lyra Wilder can be reached at lyrawild@umich.edu.

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