Seeing NFL players kneel during the national anthem didn’t sit well with Jason Burle, the owner of a Missouri bar, so he turned the jerseys of NFL players Marshawn Lynch and Colin Kaepernick into a doormat that reads “Lynch Kaepernick.”

After a passerby saw the offending mat and posted a photo on Facebook, the media outcry was swift.

Burle told KOMU-TV that “it’s not a race thing.”

 Burle later rearranged the jerseys so that the doormat read “Kaepernick Lynch,” USAToday reported.

Kaepernick began a movement in 2016 by taking a knee for the National Anthem before NFL games to protest police brutality and racial injustice. Lynch has participated in what is now a widespread protest.

When Taylor Sloan saw the jerseys, he and Burle had a heated online exchange, KOMU.com reported:

Sloan wrote on the Facebook page, “You are also expressing hate, violence and continuing American racism under the faux guise of patriotism.”

Burle responded, “It’s funny to me that someone would look that far deeply into it just to find a racist link.”

Burle told KOMU the doormat is about standing up for himself and his family, many of whom served in the military. Burle spent six years in the Air Force. Seeing NFL players kneel during the national anthem didn’t sit well with him.

Burle saw no problem with placing the words “Lynch Kaepernick” together, Sloan said.

The bar owner told KOMU that his makeshift doormat is about nothing but respect for the American flag. Burle said he disagrees with NFL players’ kneeling during the anthem, but recognizes their right to do so.

“I commend them for what they’re doing, as far as the right goes. I fought for that right,” Burle said. “The same thing that gives them that right gives me the right to place these out here.”

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