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Imrem: The national anthem and Independence Day

"The Star-Spangled Banner" will be played before baseball games around the country during this long Independence Day weekend.

This includes Chicago White Sox games in Sox Park the last three days and the upcoming Chicago Cubs game in Wrigley Field on July Fourth.

For me, Independence Day in 2017 brings back a memory from Thanksgiving Day in 2016.

The Fourth of July celebrates freedom, and who exercised it more profoundly and diversely last football season than Aretha Franklin and Colin Kaepernick.

Many of us Americans take our national anthem for granted, just as many of us take our freedoms for granted.

A good number of athletes, fans and media members fidget through the song, anxious for it to end and eager for the game to begin.

Sometimes someone in the press box will clock the anthem and heads will shake at performers who string it out for their own gratification.

One of the longest I ever heard was Franklin's four-minute, 35-second version on Thanksgiving Day in Detroit last November.

Watching on TV at home, I cried throughout the final four minutes.

Running through my mind was that we truly are a diverse nation. Our diversity exists not only between different groups but within religions, ethnicities and racial groups.

How else can you explain that in one football season Kaepernick, a younger quarterback of color, protested American social injustice by not standing for The Star-Spangled Banner …

While Franklin, an older soul singer of color, honored America by giving one of the best anthem renderings ever?

The contrast was stark: Kaepernick used the national anthem as a platform to protest America's injustices, and Franklin used it to honor the country.

Cases could be made - depending on who is making them - that in their respective ways both Ms. Franklin and Mr. Kaepernick are patriots, and our freedoms afford each the opportunity to be so as they see fit.

The nation should stand at attention for the Queen of Soul even if it takes four hours and 35 minutes for her to sing the cooking directions on the back of a box of mushroom risotto from Trader Joe's.

As for Kaepernick, I wouldn't kneel during the anthem, but it was OK with me that he and other NFL players felt a need to.

But on that Thanksgiving morning, I wondered whether Colin Kaepernick would have stood in Ford Field as Aretha Franklin sang the anthem.

Here was a 74-year-old black woman who has lived through both the setbacks and successes that minorities experienced in America during her lifetime.

Franklin has seen more - and for much longer - than any of today's world-class athletes have.

Yet she proudly and loudly belted out the national anthem in her hometown and on national TV.

Why did I tear up? Maybe because of the context of that socially turbulent football season.

Aretha Franklin's version of the anthem was a reminder of what's good about America, while Colin Kaepernick's protest was a reminder that America can do better.

Baseball not being football, major-league players haven't demonstrated this year like NFL players did last year.

Regardless, I wouldn't mind the memory of Thanksgiving Day making me choke up a bit while listening to the national anthem on Independence Day.

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