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Across America, millions of us who don’t follow football experienced the shock and sadness of hearing that a young man in his prime suddenly collapsed on the field Monday night when his heart stopped. The entire stadium of 65,000 Bills-Bengals fans went silent.
Then something amazing unfolded that could affect America in a profound way.
Most of the country, young and old, started seeing those video clips of the whole Buffalo team kneeling at midfield to pray for Damar Hamlin, the Bills’ 24-year-old safety. Of course, millions of Americans had watched live as this moment of faith unfolded.
America started praying. Even an on-air ESPN host stopped to pray with his media colleagues. Important things became very clear, and the unimportant disappeared.
Along with the images of men kneeling in prayer, I was touched by seeing a black player (Tre’Davious White) hugging a white player (Mitch Morse), both grieving for their young teammate, now with his whole future in question, not to mention his life.
Different images from earlier NFL games came to mind – pictures of a different kind of kneeling, players «taking a knee» in angry protest. For many Americans this only made the anger worse, the pain deeper and racial division wider.
I thought back to all the pain of that division in 2020, back to images of fury in the streets after the George Floyd killing. But now what we saw was the opposite, different races hugging for the sake of the shared love they had for an NFL brother.
So which of these two images is the real America?
Admittedly, race relations in the news have seemed worse than ever, especially during the recent election cycle.
