Kaepernick Sits

Yesterday I was part of a discussion of Colin Kaepernick’s refusal to stand during the playing of the National Anthem. Kaepernick is a black quarterback with ties to Black Lives Matter. At an NFL football game he was making a point about how African Americans get treated by the police.  

There were eight people in this discussion, and for most the issue had already been framed by TV, radio or newspapers. It was a patriotic issue.  Kaepernick was, in their view, insulting Americans and the military by quietly remaining seated during the national anthem.

I decided to attempt to reframe (in what I hoped was the Lakoff manner). That is, I tried to shift the frame from a discussion of patriotism to a discussion of how proud we should be of our support for human rights. I talked about how the freedom of speech was one of the best goals of our culture. I mentioned how much Americans value the right to protest and demonstrate freely. To my surprise, this actually worked, and attitudes toward Kaepernick modified. 

The method: shift from a conservative frame to a progressive frame. Perhaps all of us share both frames, in which case the shifting process might be easier than I expect.