The major sports leagues have a history of helping to lead the way in ending racial segregation in our nation. Sports also unite us across whatever political divides exist.

In 1947, Jackie Robinson famously broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball, nearly a decade prior to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision ending racial segregation in schools. Less well known, Kenny Washington (who happened to be a teammate of Robinson’s at UCLA) became the first black football player to break the National Football League’s color barrier when he signed with the LA Rams in 1946. Again, this happened well before the end of Jim Crow and racial segregation in the South.

In other words, pro football has a long history of standing against racism and segregation, and yet none of that seems to matter based on the “woke” messaging being promoted by today’s NFL.

NFL execs have bought into the “woke” worldview that condemns the U.S. for “systemic racism” despite obvious evidence to the contrary. And according to the upside-down “woke” worldview, racial segregation is now a good thing — a thing to be celebrated. The NFL has fallen so far down this “social justice” rabbit hole that teams have begun playing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” known as the “black national anthem,” along with the U.S. national anthem before every game.

On Sunday, stadiums filled with fans were subjected to this divisive display, all done in the name of “combating racism.” Furthermore, players were encouraged to wear one of six approved “social justice” decals on their helmets. The choices included but were limited to, “It Takes All of Us,” “End Racism,” “Stop Hate,” “Black Lives Matter,” “Inspire Change,” and “Say Their Stories.”

This is the same NFL that back in 2016 denied the Dallas Cowboys’ request to wear a helmet decal honoring five police officers murdered in an ambush. Now, the NFL is promoting BLM slogans while literally celebrating racial segregation by promoting a black national anthem — as if our real national anthem doesn’t include black Americans.

This decision is so bad that even leftist Bill Maher blasted the lunacy. “I saw last night on the football game, Alicia Keys sang ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ which now I hear is called the black national anthem,” he said. “Now, maybe we should get rid of our national anthem, but I think we should have one national anthem. I think when you go down a road where you’re having two different national anthems, colleges sometimes now have — many of them have different graduation ceremonies for black and white, separate dorms — this is what I mean! Segregation! You’ve inverted the idea. We’re going back to that under a different name.”

While it was good to see stadiums filled with fans again after the pandemic shutdown last year, the NFL seems hellbent on insulting its biggest fans by insisting, despite historical evidence to the contrary, that the nation is awash in racism.

The motivation to challenge segregation in the 1940s was borne out of facing the truth. The motivation to push segregation today rests upon a pile of politically conceived lies.