By tradition, people rise to their feet when the national anthem is played to show respect for American ideals.

A week ago, the crowd at Amherst College’s Pratt Field stood before the start of a football game. They listened as the anthem referred to this country as the “land of the free and the home of the brave.”

Raheem Jackson, an Amherst senior running back on the squad, heard those words while kneeling. His silent defiance, shared by several teammates, was in itself a brave act in a land where not everyone feels free.

Their quiet and contained protest, believed to be the first of its kind in recent western Massachusetts history, is no doubt an affront to those who believe sitting out the anthem is disrespectful. Such protests touch a nerve, as they always have when flags, symbols and anthems are involved.

Across the country, day after day, when people rise for the song that’s been the official U.S. anthem since 1931, they feel different things. Millions embrace the sacrifices their families have made for the defense of the country. Many stand in gratitude for the opportunities life in America has provided.

Some others, surely, get to their feet because they feel obligated to do so, paying little attention to the words of the anthem.

Those words are not a loyalty oath. They are aspirational. If the lines sung in the national anthem are not taken that way, as real words in a country that prizes free speech, something has already been lost.

And when the words fall short for listeners, when they fail to speak to actual experience, there is a problem.

Few know the last stanza of Francis Scott Key’s 1814 “The Star Spangled Banner.” It is this: “O, thus be it ever when freemen shall stand, / Between their lov’d homes and the war’s desolation; / Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land / Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!”

If these dreams of freedom, safety and national unity are to be taken seriously, there’s work to do. True patriots repair holes in the national fabric, they don’t cover them up.

In interviews with the Gazette, Jackson and teammate A.J. Poplin said they felt a need to signal that ideals in the anthem ring hollow for them in the face of enduring racism. They noted incidents of police brutality and racial profiling and the shooting of black people in police confrontations, as well as racial divisions and actions that keep people of color on the margins.

Their measured words, in addition to their decision to “take a knee,” invite reflection. That spirit, not recrimination, is the best course for all who believe in our nation’s founding values.

Poplin said his main reason for protesting was concern about his father’s safety, saying of him, “My dad fits the profile of a man that could be gunned down for no reason. He carries a gun lawfully under the concealed-carry laws of Connecticut,” he told reporter Michael Antonellis. “He may have a gun on him and his hands may be raised, but he could still be seen as an aggressive person or a threat. I don’t want him to be profiled as being dangerous by anybody as soon as they see his face or his frame.”

“It is important that I take a knee,” Poplin said. “I want to use my platform as a football player to bring awareness to the situation.”

The players’ actions are backed by the football coach and the college president, Carolyn “Biddy” Martin, who said, “The students were exercising their right to freedom of expression, and we support that right.”

The college’s athletic director, Don Faulstick, went further in a statement. “We support all of our student-athletes on campus and our opponents who choose to demonstrate their frustration with racial and social injustice issues in society.” To do less would be to disenfranchise the scholar-athlete.

Jackson spoke of feeling personal pain over recent shootings in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Charlotte, North Carolina. “I want to see people do more than just taking a knee. I want to see people not crossing the street when a black man walks toward them. … I want to see people take action in every facet of their life.”