Over the past 16 months, Colin Kaepernick has had plenty to say on social media and in press conferences about the state of affairs for black people in America. Dating back to early 2016, he has regularly posted on social media about issues with police in America, and of course, we all know about his protest this past season in which he and other players took a knee during the National Anthem (if you missed it, let me know what rock you were buried under).
Over the weekend, he posted this tweet, comparing police officers to the runaway slave patrol. I had missed it when he first tweeted, but it has certainly become a thing in the media. Someone suggested in this thread that my not posting it was a choice because the tweet reflected poorly on Kaepernick.
One reason I did not post anything is because he has been posting and retweeting inflammatory stuff on social media for some time. I figured it was one more thing that would piss some people off, and we’d move on to the next thing. But, it is being brought up by some media folks (Albert Breer, PFT), so I figured I’d post something.
And if you don’t want to talk about Kaepernick, there are plenty of other articles on the front page. Maybe talk about possible team MVP candidates? How about getting some 49ers schedule wallpaper for your computer or cell phone? How about learning about the 49ers recent front office promotions? And we even have a QB bubble watch post. So much non-Kap content!
I don’t have much to say on this because I find myself going down quite the rabbit hole of police history. American history is fairly white-washed through high school, and it takes more advanced college level classes (and of course your own outside reading) to really get a good handle on America’s treatment of minorities. I’ve found myself today doing some googling, and ending up way down a rabbit hole. The first article I found was from a professor of criminal justice at Eastern Kentucky University. I came across this at The Root, and that led me to this Bloomberg article by a Harvard professor.
This is all just in doing some research over the course of 15 or 20 minutes. I won’t pretend to even have a beginner’s level understanding of all this, but I do plan on doing more research. Before people yell and scream, maybe do some research of your own and see what you come across. Maybe it will reinforce your opinions, maybe it will change your point of view. I don’t know, but I think it makes sense to stop and consider things a bit more deeply than just what a tweet says.
The tweet itself is plenty incendiary, but it certainly has people talking. Ideally, people will take a minute and consider, “well, why is he tweeting this? Maybe I should do some more research into the subject.” I’m not holding my breath that a lot of people will approach it with that kind of nuance, but you never know. I can say I doubt I would have thought about the topic, let alone done more research on it, if not for the tweet. And I have to say, it is a fascinating topic.