The social media mob is at it again.

The smartphone posse is always ready to bash anyone over some perceived slight, particularly someone of a different race or color.

First, it was poor Gabby Douglas, the 20-year-old Olympic gold medal gymnast berated heartlessly simply for relaxing her arms at her side instead of lifting right hand over heart during the national anthem.

Now, pro football backup quarterback Colin Kaepernick of the San Francisco 49ers is the target, because he didn’t stand for the national anthem Friday in what he called a protest against prejudice in the U.S.

Look, I think everyone ought to stand and salute or put hand over heart during The Star-Spangled Banner. (Texas, Our Texas too.)

But not everyone does, or says the Pledge of Allegiance to the U.S. or Texas flag. Generally, that’s our right as Americans.

(Kaepernick still has to follow 49ers policy or the pro football rule. But so far, there isn’t one.)

I understand why some fans are upset. Whether or not you see America the way Kaepernick sees it as a 28-year-old of mixed race, fans rarely respond well to lectures from an $11.9 million backup quarterback.

But how many of the fans mad at Kaepernick have seen a pro hockey game? Players don’t pay attention during the American or Canadian anthems. They stand idly or skate circles. It’s not a protest, but nobody complains. (The Dallas Stars fans even turn The Star-Spangled Banner into a “Stars!” cheer.)

If you always blame people of color for protests, let me take you out to some Sons of Confederate Veterans lineage society meetings right here in Tarrant and Parker counties. A rump faction refuses to fly a U.S. flag or say the pledge.

They call the pledge “socialist.” They blame “Lincoln Republicans.”

Almost as long as we’ve had a national anthem we’ve had conscientious objectors. Back in 1961 in Michigan, at the height of patriotic fervor and Cold War fears, a prayerful student at a Roman Catholic college made headlines when he refused to stand for it each morning.

“If I stand for the national anthem,” Aquinas College student Dennis Nawrocki said, “I’m patriotic. If I do not, I’m un-American. I do not see the connection.”

In 1972, as America divided over the Vietnam War, cheerleaders at both Creighton University and Northern Illinois refused to stand for the anthem or left the basketball floor.

In 1989, there was even a Texas Stadium manners breach at a Dallas Cowboys game.

A reader wrote in the Star-Telegram: “JEERS: To Jerry Jones and Liz Taylor, who were the only two people at last Sunday’s Cowboys-Redskins game not standing when the national anthem was played. Riding out in a cart … was bad enough, but sitting while it was played was more than many of us could handle. Jerry, please note that in Texas, we stand for the national anthem.

“P.S.: Tom [Landry] always took off his hat.”

Our archives do not record whether Jones was suspended.