{"id":13799,"date":"2016-09-12T10:30:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-12T15:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=13799"},"modified":"2017-06-27T08:10:01","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T13:10:01","slug":"in-life-and-liberty-race-and-the-national-anthem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2016\/09\/12\/in-life-and-liberty-race-and-the-national-anthem\/","title":{"rendered":"In Life and Liberty: Race and the National Anthem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0What do you do when the national anthem plays? Do you immediately stand and put your hand over your heart? Do you take your hat off? Do you stay sitting down?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The issue of what someone should do during the national anthem has become a hot topic within the last few weeks. With the Olympics taking place and then football starting up right after the Olympics ended, we have had many opportunities to hear the national anthem.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Gabby Douglas was criticized for not putting her hand over her heart during her gold medal awarding ceremony at the Olympics. Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49ers quarterback, sat down during the national anthem as a show of protest.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Kaepernick has since declared that he will not stand during the national anthem until the country is \u201crepresenting people the way that it\u2019s supposed to.\u201d He is protesting against police brutality against minorities and he has criticized both Clinton and Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0His stance has his teammates divided on what is right and what is wrong. It has also opened the question of why do we stand for the national anthem?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Kaepernick has received national attention and now has the opportunity to speak his views in a way that he probably wouldn\u2019t have before. It is clear that his motives are not political as he basically called Clinton a criminal and Trump openly racist.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Of course, Donald Trump cannot let someone insult him, even with the truth, and let them get away with it. He stated that Kaepernick should start thinking about maybe going to another country. Let\u2019s remind Trump that he wants to make America great again. So maybe he should just find another country as well if he doesn\u2019t like what\u2019s going on within it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Kaepernick\u2019s stance has brought even more attention to an issue that has been debated and talked about for several years now. The issue of racial tensions and police brutality does not seem like it will be fading away anytime soon.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I\u2019m not the white person who goes around declaring that people are racist towards me. I don\u2019t really understand why I should have it so easy just because my skin is pale, pale white, but I do. I will not deny that it is something that needs to change. This is the Land of the Free and it is time that we all started acting like it. Minorities should be treated as equally and fairly as I am. Police officers should never have the policy of shoot first, ask questions later.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0However, I will say that I have met many police officers in recent years who treat everyone with respect and dignity and I believe that it is an unfairness to them to qualify all police officers as racist and unafraid to use deadly force. I thank those men who everyday put their life on the line for all of us.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0What will Kaepernick truly gain by refusing to stand for the national anthem? He is willing to lose a few fans, to be criticized by his peers, but no one can deny that he hasn\u2019t kept the conversation on race relations in America going.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0There is no law that dictates that he must stand up. I think that there are many of us in America who don\u2019t feel particularly patriotic lately. Maybe he is one of the few who has actually dared to vocalize it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0We do live in a free country, where at least we will not be killed for our beliefs or our thoughts, but some could argue that to truly be a free country, to truly be all that the national anthem represents, we must have that awkward uncomfortable conversation about race in our country today. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I don\u2019t want to take away from the racial issue that our country is facing. It is serious and it is a problem. No law abiding citizen should be afraid of the police and no police officer should fear a law abiding African American. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I respect Kaepernick\u2019s right to peacefully protest a wrongdoing in our country.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Veterans have come in support of Kaepernick on Twitter using the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick. As one veteran said on his account, \u201cMy grandfather served so Rosa Parks could sit down. I served so @Kaepernick7, [Colin Kaepernick], could sit down.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0I don\u2019t think any words could describe it so perfectly. We don\u2019t have to agree with what he said and what he did, but I believe he has the right to sit down during a national anthem in show of protest. I love our country and feel blessed to live in it, but it is not a perfect country and it still has some serious problems. I think it\u2019s okay if we admit that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Laina Yost<\/strong><\/p>\n

Managing Editor<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0What do you do when the national anthem plays? Do you immediately stand and put your hand over your heart? Do you take your hat off? Do you stay sitting down? \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0The issue of what someone should do during the national anthem has become a hot topic within the last few […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10290,"featured_media":13698,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1450,1449,1428,2005,1448,1384,523],"class_list":["post-13799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-colin-kaepernick","tag-gabby-douglas","tag-in-life-and-liberty","tag-laina-yost","tag-national-anthem","tag-opinion","tag-protest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Laina-Website.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-3Az","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13799"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13800,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13799\/revisions\/13800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}