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Colin Kaepernick in the Philosophy Classroom…

Christopher Pynes

Colin Kaepernick is a multi-millionaire, NFL quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. He recently made headlines by refusing to stand for the U.S. National Anthem before the start of NFL games. Lot of people have impassioned opinions on the acceptability of his refusal to stand, even a Supreme Court Justice, who eventually apologized for the remark, have been critical of him.

Last week, one of my students asked me about Kaepernick during class. This was one of those teachable moments we all really look for. Philosophy in the real world making a difference! I said unless someone really understood his reasoning, they couldn’t be critical of the refusal to stand. The student pressed me on my view…


Here was my response: I don’t have any issue with Kaepernick’s refusal to stand even though I understand why some people might. To really understand Kaepernick, however, you have to understand, that there is another First Amendment right, other than free speech, he is trying to exercise, namely: petitioning the government for a redress of grievances. Kaepernick believes that police violence, particularly against blacks, is excessive, and he wants the government to do something about it. That seems a reasonable thing to ask, in my view, and protest as petition isn’t that strange philosophically. I ended by telling the student that I hoped a white NFL player would kneel alongside Kaepernick during The Star-Spangled Banner, and that police violence would in some way be radically diminished.

For those interested in the stats on police violence, this is a good resource: http://mappingpoliceviolence.org

I am opening up comments for discussion on how others have discussed this issue with their philosophy students. Please stay on topic.

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9 responses to “Colin Kaepernick in the Philosophy Classroom…”

  1. John Turri

    I teach in Canada so Kaepernick's decision is not nearly as controversial a topic here, but to the extent that this has come up with my students, it hasn't struck me as an opportunity to showcase philosophy. Instead, it seemed primarily like an opportunity to help model constructive dialogue about important, relevant political issues. One question that I tried to raise in students' minds was this: why are high-profile sporting events so frequently accompanied by (what some regard as obligatory) nationalistic rituals? What purposes does this serve? In my view, the answer to that sociological question is important in its own right and provides valuable context when considering specific cases, such as Kaepernick's.

    But perhaps I'm missing something. How is this an example of "philosophy in the real world making a difference"? And even if "protest as petition" was "strange philosophically," what practical difference would that make?

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  2. Paul

    Kaepernick's protest came up for discussion in my political philosophy class a few weeks ago. The context was a discussion of historian Eric Hobsbawm's well-known volume "The Invention of Tradition." In his introduction to that text, Hobsbawm argues that many of the 'traditions' that form a significant part of shared national identities are neither genuinely old nor separable from existing class (and, by extension, in the U.S. at least, racial) hierarchies. He specifically mentions national anthems as belonging to this set of "invented traditions," and provides comparisons with the national songs of Germany and Great Britain. Although Hobsbawm doesn't address Hart's claims, in "The Concept of Law," concerning the conceptual difficulties involved in creating new traditions, I found myself wondering how, if at all, their two accounts could be reconciled.

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  3. Charles Young

    My class wanted to know how the statistics on police violence nowadays compare to the statistics on lynching back in the day: how many police killings in the US in 2015 vs how many lynching in 1815 or 1915, for example. I didn't know. Numbers of both for all years since 1492 would be good to know, too.

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  4. bzfgt

    I probably didn't handle it that well, I just said for the life of me I don't understand why anyone would care whether someone stands, sits, jumps up and down or whatever during some song.

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  5. Henry

    I don't see why this should be an issue at all. A football game is not a government activity. A private person (whoever decides that a game should open with the national anthem) is, in effect, asking others who share his beliefs to join him in expressing them. A person who does not wish to join him, for whatever reason or no reason, is not obliged to join him or to defend his decision not to join him. A person who does not stand might find patriotism offensive. Or he might support patriotism but find that the rote singing of the national anthem at a football game degrades patriotism. Or he might prefer to listen to music on his iPod.

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  6. DS

    Well, the students certainly care about it. At Princeton, the Whig-Clio debating society just had a debate about last night! https://www.evensi.us/debate-colin-kaepernick-amp-the-national-anthem-the/188635923

    I'm teaching On Liberty in class right now and we used it to talk about Mill's harm principle (among other examples)–whether speech can rise ever rise to the level of a harm for Mill, and if not, why not. I agree with most people here, I don't think it's much of an issue, but it is certainly offending plenty of people out there, and the students are certainly thinking about it. So why not find a way to discuss it in class–it served as great fodder for a discussion of Mill's distinction between harm and offense, as well as social vs state sanctions.

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  7. V. Alan White

    Kaepernick is my enemy when he plays my beloved Packers. As if that mattered. But here?

    His act exemplifies what the anthem supposedly stands for–the political rights of free expression. It's why flag-burning is one of the highest expressions of political free speech dissent as well–and why calls to ban flag-burning constitutionally would amend the 1st amendment to all our detriment.

    I'm sick of so-called patriotism run rampant to undermine the very foundation of what it supposedly is all about. And Ruth Bader Ginsberg should know better than to have said what she said in the first place, even if she later recanted.

    The very fact that this has become such an issue is a litmus test for how seriously the electorate takes constitutional rights–beyond the 2nd amendment right to arm themselves, that is.

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  8. Tony

    I discussed this at length in my critical thinking class (I teach at a large urban university in the south). I reminded them that the claims made by Kaepernick are empirical and that it doesn't help to jump to wild conclusions without considering all the data. I also took this as an opportunity to discuss the problem with anecdotal evidence. We then spent time discussing the media's role in all this and did some historical comparisons between the fear mongering taking place now (regarding police brutality) and the fear mongering that was taking place in the 90's (in the 90's it was the "super predators" roaming the streets).

    I ended be encouraging them to look for more nuanced views to a complex problem (pointed them to Fryer's piece and the Collins piece which now sadly gone).

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  9. Daniel Kaufman

    My mostly rural and working class students, hailing disproportionately from families with military connections are very patriotic and find the notion of multi-multi-millionaire athletes protesting oppression quite bizarre and even offensive. I'm not suggesting that they are correct in their assessment, only pointing out just how differently something like this looks, when one adopts a different perspective.

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