Before the national anthem is performed at sporting events, fans are usually asked to stand up and remove their hats before the song begins. At the Super Bowl yesterday, though, Jay-Z did neither: A video taken from the stands (via TMZ) of Demi Lovato’s singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” shows Jay (with a hat on) and Beyonce seated as they watched Lovato perform before kickoff.
This prompted a response from Colin Kaepernick, who shared an Instagram Story that featured a screenshot of an article pointing out Jay and Beyonce’s sit-down. Text placed over the screenshot reads, “I thought we were ‘past kneeling’ tho?”
The “past kneeling” comment is a reference to what Jay said last summer about protesting: “I think we’ve moved past kneeling. I think it’s time to go into actionable items. I don’t want people to stop protesting at all. Kneeling is a form of protest. I support protests across the board. […] We forget that Colin’s whole thing was to bring attention to social injustice. In that case, this is a success. This is the next phase. There [are] two parts of protesting. You go outside and you protest, and then the company or the individual says, ‘I hear you. What do we do next?'”
This comes just days after Jay spoke about his relationship with the NFL in a New York Times interview. He said of Kaepernick, “No one is saying he hasn’t been done wrong: He was done wrong. I would understand if it was three months ago. But it was three years ago and someone needs to say, ‘What do we do now — because people are still dying?’”
Watch Lovato’s full national anthem performance here.
