Welp, so much for exiled quarterback Colin Kaepernick playing in the NFL ever again — or at least that’s what some fans believe now.
Needless to say, Kaepernick did not spend much money on fireworks on the Fourth of July as the former quarterback for the San Fransisco 49ers completely and categorically renounced the holiday as a “celebration of White supremacy.” Kaep, 32, added that he looked forward to the “liberation for all” people in America in an explosive tweet to his 2.3 million followers on July 4, 2020.
Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of “independence”, while you enslaved our ancestors. We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all. ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/YCD2SYlgv4
— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) July 4, 2020
A one-minute video accompanies this combustible tweet that flips between images of slavery, the Ku Klux Klan, lynchings and police brutality. The unmistakable voice of James Earl Jones is heard quoting the famous 19th-century abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass as he boldly asked in 1852: “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?”
Kaepernick became a cause célèbre when he first sat, then knelt, during the national anthem in 2016 to silently protest police brutality and racial injustice in America. Kaepernick has not been signed by any team since he became a free agent in 2017, which later led to a successful multimillion-dollar lawsuit accusing the NFL of colluding to keep Kaep out the league.
However, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in June 2020 that he would welcome Kaep back into the league if he proves he is good enough to earn a roster spot.
