Colin Kaepernick's controversial stand to sit during the American national anthem is not about the actual national anthem. The NFL quarterback's protest takes issue with police brutality and systemic racial injustice in the country.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," the 49ers star explained.
Yet Kaepernick's continued defiance has struck a nationalist nerve and fueled a widespread backlash, triggering the ire of the right-wing punditocracy, fellow NFL players and coaches and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who suggested Kaepernick "find a country that works better for him."
Some fans burned Kaepernick jerseys. Other critics said that Kaepernick was disrespecting the country's military servicemen and women, whom the ritual playing of the national anthem at American sporting events is intended to honor. The White House itself deemed his protest "objectionable."
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But Kaepernick himself is drawing from another American tradition of peaceful dissent against the state, which includes black athletes before him. And in the wake of his most recent protest, some liberal commentators pointed to a long overlooked reality -- that "The Star-Spangled Banner" itself is a 200-year-old ode to an inglorious war, penned gleefully by a slave-owner about an event that involved the massacre of African Americans.
Consider the song's famous last lines and the two that precede it:
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The lyrics "No refuge could save the hireling and slave/ From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave" -- few may remember now -- is an explicit reference to the killing of runaway slaves who had joined the British during the War of 1812 with the hope of winning their freedom.
Of course, no one with any political clout -- not least Kaepernick -- is suggesting that the anthem, or even those particular lyrics, be changed. But national anthems are symbols for a country's identity. And, in some instances, they can embody a nation's reckoning with its past and desire for change.
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Take the case of South Africa. After the end of decades of apartheid rule, the country's Afrikaans anthem -- "Die Stem van Suid-Afrika" -- was phased out and replaced in 1997 by a hybrid anthem sung in the country's five most spoken languages. It stitched together "Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika," a church hymn sung for decades in opposition to apartheid, with a verse in Afrikaans from "Die Stem" -- a gesture at the time to show unity with whites nervous about their place in a post-apartheid society.
Now, though, some are calling for those lines to be dropped from the anthem.
"There is nothing wrong with the actual words or melody of Die Stem," wrote South African columnist Max du Preez last week. "But no adult South African can have any doubt that is a symbol closely associated with the apartheid era. Whether you like to hear it or not, Die Stem and the orange, white and blue flag were the prime symbols of Afrikaner nationalism that dominated our society between 1948 and 1994."
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Regime change and movements for political reconciliation are the most direct catalysts for the altering or scrapping of a national anthem. In 2007, Nepal unveiled a new anthem to reflect the dissolution of its centuries-old monarchy. After the toppling of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, the anthem associated with decades of Hussein's Baathist rule was tossed out. But the dysfunctional government in Baghdad is still struggling to find a new one.
The tune of Germany's national anthem may be an 18th-century hymn, but its 19th-century lyrics acquired a darker connotation during the years of the Third Reich and Nazi rule. It was restored in 1951 as the anthem of West Germany but was stripped off verses that asserted the nation's superiority over all others. This version is now the anthem of a unified Germany.
The shifting lyrics of an anthem can sometimes reflect the evolution of a country's politics. After the death of Soviet despot Joseph Stalin, authorities keen to pull the Soviet Union away from Stalin's legacy decided in 1956 to stop singing the lyrics he had ordered written for the 1944 anthem. New lyrics, with no mention of Stalin, were made official in 1977.
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After a hiatus following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet anthem's melody was reinstated as the Russian anthem in 2000 by President Vladimir Putin, along with a new set of nationalist verses to better reflect his vision of an emboldened, strong Russia.
Sometimes, there need be no verse. Since 1978, Spaniards have stopped singing the words of their old anthem -- "Marcha Real" -- because of its association with the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and instead simply hum along to the melody at sporting events and other global competitions.
And the United States' northern neighbor has at least shown Washington that it's possible to contemplate minor adjustments. This June, Canadian lawmakers in the House of Commons passed a bill to make the English lyrics of the national anthem gender neutral. It would no longer say "true patriot love, in all thy sons command," but "in all of us command."
Read more:
Insulting Kaepernick says more about our patriotism than his
Does it matter if you sing your national anthem?
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