Colin Kaepernick is Not an Activist
Colin Kaepernick did something bold back in August of 2016. He decided to sit during the national anthem in a preseason game. It had never been done in the NFL. The same act was done over 20 years ago by Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf of the Denver Nuggets. He was suspended, waived and blackballed much like Kaepernick. Kaepernick brought attention to police brutality and unfair treatment of blacks. He started something. He became an activist overnight. He has done a lot of good work since then donating money to various causes. With all that being said, Kaepernick is now the face of the Just Do It campaign for Nike. The troubling part of all this is that Kaepernick seemed to be authentic but choosing to align himself with corporate interests diminishes his activism. Activism isn’t meant as a way to curry favor with elites and spark radical change irregardless of which party holds office. Darren Seals and many others who did the REAL work on the ground, didn’t sacrifice so folks Deray and Netta could have photo-ops and visits to the White House and Kaepernick could get a contract from a company who pays its workers unfair wages. Kaepernick has now aligned himself with the same forces who can care less about blacks. I guess I should also say that this doesn’t surprise me because he met with Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter. If activism is now taking money from corporate America instead of doing the real grassroots work, then the world is on even more trouble than I thought. MLK and Malcolm X would never even think to sell their souls for money all in the name of social justice. Kaep is no better than Deray and others like him. It’s time out that we allow white liberals and the media choose who our leaders should be. We should be looking to the grassroots and not celebs and athletes.
