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This article traces debates about African American professional football players’ protests during the national anthem. After reviewing over 400 media texts, we found that each side operates from mirrored ethical positions that lead to competing conceptions of patriotism. We use the term “patriarchal patriotism” for people opposed to the protests since they hold that institutions of authority protect citizens, and therefore citizens owe them loyalty and deference. We use “constructive patriotism” for protest supporters since they hold that citizens have an ethical obligation to oppose inequities and work on the nation through protest and dissent. Each position, however, operates as two sides of the same racial–patriotic coin. We argue that the strategic embrace of patriotism by protest proponents limits the radical, transformative potential of the protests by operating on a nationalistic political terrain that suggests the racial state can operate for racial benevolence.

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Amidst a crisis in the US racial state over the summer of 2020, typically “politically” averse professional sports leagues proliferated anti-racist statements. We see the sudden advertising of corporate values and politics by sports leagues as stemming from the development of socially conscious marketing (SCM) in recent years. Marketers celebrate commercials such as Nike’s Dream Crazy (2019) since they amplify the political speech of activists, such as Colin Kaepernick, and advertise ways for consumers to engage in ethical consumption. Using discourse analysis of marketing literature on SCM and textual analysis of SCM commercials shown during sporting events, we show that SCM appropriates dissent against neoliberal capitalism in order to legitimate capitalism and resist systemic change during a moment of crisis. We conclude that while we can continue to expect professional sports leagues and other brands to appear “woke,” we should not expect to see change in the exploitative conditions that make them profitable.

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