fitz - 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick says voting would be hypocritical
Ariz. — The football postgame news conference is not designed for political debate, so there was no give-and-take Sunday when Colin Kaepernick defended his decision to not vote in Tuesday’s election.
About half the eligible American voters also snubbed the ballot box, but Kaepernick, after all, is the leader of a movement he hopes will inspire changes in our current system. His decision to not vote brought heavy criticism — from this writer, from ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and from many others.
At the end of his brief postgame newser, I asked Kaepernick, “The criticism from you saying you weren’t going to vote — do you have a reaction to that?”
Kaepernick, true to his new persona as a man who no longer ducks questions, said, “You know, I think it would be hypocritical of me to vote. I said from the beginning I was against oppression, I was against the system of oppression. I’m not going to show support for that system. And to me, the oppressor isn’t going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression.”
Kaepernick was then asked, “With the man who was elected president, do you feel any more urgency for your cause?”
He said, “I think everybody should feel urgency, to make sure we’re doing the right thing, building, you know, things the right way, in order to be able to protect ourselves from the things that may come from this.”
Under his sport coat, Kaepernick wore a black T-shirt with a quote attributed to Malcom X in large lettering, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
It remains to be seen what will become of Kaepernick’s protest movement. It didn’t get any real traction in the NBA or in Major League Baseball, and it hasn’t seemed to pick up steam among NFL players. But with Donald Trump elected as the 45th president, who knows?
During the campaign, Trump famously invited Kaepernick to find a new country if he doesn’t like this one.
“Good luck,” Trump said then, snarkily.
That fight might not be over. We could be heading for a heck of a stare-down between two determined men with strong convictions and wild hairdos.
Ariz. — The football postgame news conference is not designed for political debate, so there was no give-and-take Sunday when Colin Kaepernick defended his decision to not vote in Tuesday’s election.
About half the eligible American voters also snubbed the ballot box, but Kaepernick, after all, is the leader of a movement he hopes will inspire changes in our current system. His decision to not vote brought heavy criticism — from this writer, from ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith and from many others.
At the end of his brief postgame newser, I asked Kaepernick, “The criticism from you saying you weren’t going to vote — do you have a reaction to that?”
Kaepernick, true to his new persona as a man who no longer ducks questions, said, “You know, I think it would be hypocritical of me to vote. I said from the beginning I was against oppression, I was against the system of oppression. I’m not going to show support for that system. And to me, the oppressor isn’t going to allow you to vote your way out of your oppression.”
Kaepernick was then asked, “With the man who was elected president, do you feel any more urgency for your cause?”
He said, “I think everybody should feel urgency, to make sure we’re doing the right thing, building, you know, things the right way, in order to be able to protect ourselves from the things that may come from this.”
Under his sport coat, Kaepernick wore a black T-shirt with a quote attributed to Malcom X in large lettering, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”
It remains to be seen what will become of Kaepernick’s protest movement. It didn’t get any real traction in the NBA or in Major League Baseball, and it hasn’t seemed to pick up steam among NFL players. But with Donald Trump elected as the 45th president, who knows?
During the campaign, Trump famously invited Kaepernick to find a new country if he doesn’t like this one.
“Good luck,” Trump said then, snarkily.
That fight might not be over. We could be heading for a heck of a stare-down between two determined men with strong convictions and wild hairdos.
