Former San Francisco 49ers star Terrell Owens claims that the situation former NFL second-string quarterback Colin Kaepernick found himself in after starting his constant protests against America is evidence of how white people “see” blacks.
During his appearance on The Jason Lee Show on Wednesday, Owens said that he was surprised by the massive backlash that fell upon Kaepernick for taking a knee during the national anthem to promulgate his year-long attack on American history, the flag, the police, the military, and our American ethos.
“I never would have thought it would have created the firestorm that it has,” Owens said, “Never thought this guy would never step back on the football field because of that.”
But as far as Owens is concerned, Kaepernick’s situation is evidence of bigotry on the part of whites.
“But it really shed light on really kinda how this world works and really how a lot of the White people see us. For so many years, we’ve tried to voice that, I mean, 400-plus something years we’ve been telling you these are some of the things that have been going on, and it took … like I said, who would’ve thought that it took a knee to bring all of this back to life.”
Owens also blasted rapper Jay-Z for partnering with the NFL around that same time because the rapper ultimately became a part of the act of moving one from Kaepernick’s anti-American statements and helped to make it all go away.
“I don’t like that because you’re addressing it at that time,” Owens told Lee, “where’s the momentum of what is going on? Where’s the continuation of really trying to rectify or bring some type of solution to it? Not just for the moment. It’s continued work. It’s not just for that moment, and you address it, and it’s swept under the rug after a few weeks or a couple of months, and then, like you said, it’s business back to usual. It has to be continued effort to rectify some of these things.”
Kaepernick, of course, was extremely militant in his hatred for America when he first started his anthem protest during the 2016 NFL season.
When he first began his protests, Kaepernick said quite directly that he could not stand for the American flag. His protest was a direct attack on the flag and the country, and he said so in his own words in August 2016.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder,” Kaepernick said.
Kaepernick also gave other clues about the nature of his protests in 2016. For instance, he wore a shirt praising Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, a mass murderer and self-professed enemy of America. Kaepernick also showed that he was not just protesting the few police officers who misbehaved when he wore socks that portrayed all police officers as pigs.
Also, in 2016, Kaepernick said that the U.S. was never great, noting that he was standing up against the whole country in general, not just in support of “social justice,” with his anthem protests.
The former NFL player also made his protest about the flag when he forced Nike to ditch its Betsy Ross flag shoes in 2019. Nike announced it intended to release a patriotic gym shoe with a Betsy Ross Flag theme until Kaepernick ginned up the anti-American left to attack Nike for the proposal. In one of his broadsides against Nike, Kaepernick even claimed that the U.S. Betsy Ross flag was a “symbol of slavery.”
Unsurprisingly, Nike immediately caved in and dumped the plans for the patriotic shoe.
Since then, he has also accused the NFL itself of treating players like “slaves.” He made the accusation as part of his Colin in Black and White series in which he accused the NFL of treating black players as if they were on slave auction blocks.
It should also be remembered that Kaepernick is not playing pro football right now because he turned down every opportunity he was offered.
Kaepernick turned down an off from the San Francisco 49ers to stay on the team in 2017 because he wanted more money. He also turned down several opportunities after that, not to mention his act of making a circus out of the NFL’s workout offer in 2019.
Yet, despite all of Kaepernick’s militancy, many blacks want to claim that Kaepernick was “only” protesting America’s history of slavery and the culture of police brutality that many blacks think they face.
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