Colin Kaepernick Bashes NFL for Empty Rhetoric on Social Justice: They’re Running ‘Propaganda About How They Care About Black Life’

Colby HallSep 14th, 2020, 2:20 pm
 

Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

The NFL season opened this weekend, and the league showed support for the Black Lives Matter movement with racial unity slogans painted in endzones and the names of victims of police brutality or social justice slogans allowed on the back players helmets. But former Super Bowl quarterback Colin Kaepernick is not impressed and let the world know via a Sunday afternoon tweet that blasted the NFL for “propaganda.”

Kaepernick is, of course, the ex-NFL QB who played for the 49ers and caused a political firestorm when he first sat during the pre-game playing of the national anthem, then took a knee in peaceful protest of what he saw as racial inequality in the American justice system.

Kaepernick’s protest started a league-wide protest, which President Donald Trump exploited as a political wedge issue in 2017, to which the NFL did not initially take kindly. But after the killing of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd by police offers, and civil unrest that followed, the country went through something of a national reckoning on race, which led to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell notably and publicly saying “black lives matter,” and eventually, adding social justice symbols to the NFL game day experience.

But Kaepernick is not impressed. In retweeting a Deadspin article focused on his former reammate Eric Reid and his alleged blackballing from the NFL, Kaepernick blasted the league’s social justice efforts, calling out what he sees as hypocrisy or at least a double standard. “While the NFL runs propaganda about how they care about Black Life, they are still actively blackballing Eric Reid (@E_Reid35) for fighting for the Black community,” he tweeted.

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Colby Hall - Founding Editor

Colby Hall is the Founding Editor of Mediaite.com. He is also a Peabody Award-winning television producer of non-fiction narrative programming as well as a terrific dancer and preparer of grilled meats.