The View Spars Over Colin Kaepernick Comparing the NFL to Slavery: ‘White Owners Prevented Him From’ Playing

Colin Kaepernick successfully garnered a tremendous amount of attention to his new Netflix series after a viral clip showed the former quarterback comparing the NFL to slavery.

Nearly five years removed from his last NFL game, Kaepernick remains a polarizing figure who transcends football and that continued Wednesday morning when The View devoted a segment to his new series Colin in Black & White.

The polarizing scene from Kaepernick’s Netflix series intertwines football players being assessed at the NFL Combine with Black men in shackles being sold as slaves.

“Nobody forces these guys to play,” said guest host and NBC Sunday Night Football reporter Michele Tafoya.

“I thought comparing it to the slave trade was a little rough,” Tafoya continued. “These guys enter willingly, they are the most well cared for people. Yes, they play a hard sport, and every one of them, Black, White, Latino, whoever’s playing the sport, will tell you how much they love it and they’re willing to do it and they make a damn good living.”

While many media pundits have blasted Kaepernick’s analogy, The View’s Sunny Hostin is not one of them.

“The majority of the owners of the NFL are White men,” said Hostin, who recently interviewed Kaepernick for Ebony. “The majority of the players are Black men. That comparison that he makes to slave owners and slaves is not, sort of, totally unreasonable or out of bounds.”

Kaepernick made more than $43 million during his NFL career, but it was cut short after he became the first high-profile athlete to kneel during the national anthem. The former quarterback struggled to receive a serious contract offer after his protest.

“He loves the sport but the White owners have prevented him from doing it,” Hostin added.

“If they believed he could win them a Super Bowl, he would be on a team right now. I promise you that,” Tafoya argued.

Watch above via The View