Report: Colin Kaepernick to Work Out for the Las Vegas Raiders

Colin Kaepernick
Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images
Warner Todd Huston

After six years out of the game, a report claims that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is set for a workout with the Las Vegas Raiders.

ESPN’s Adam Schefter broke the news on Twitter Wednesday, saying, “Colin Kaepernick, who last played football in 2016, the same year he started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice, is scheduled to work out this week for the Las Vegas Raiders, league sources told ESPN.”

As Schefter noted, Kaepernick became a national figure when he spent the entirety of the 2016 season protesting against the country by taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem.

When he first began his protests in 2016, former NFL player Colin Kaepernick said plainly 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 of 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 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 that 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 that 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 right now not playing pro football 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 turned down several opportunities after that, too, not to mention his act of making a circus out of the NFL’s workout offer in 2019.

Kaepernick continues to call the NFL something akin to slavery, and yet, he also continues to claim that he wants to be given another chance to continue his NFL career.

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