Colin Kaepernick admitted to feeling disappointment over the lack of involvement from his fellow NFL players in his national anthem protest a decade ago.
Kaepernick made the confession while promoting his book The Perilous Fight on The New Yorker Radio Hour. The former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist said he believes players around the league were scared to take a knee during the national anthem as a form of non-violent protest against police brutality towards people of color and racial injustice.
Kaepernick suggested that some players decided against protesting after having conversations with their agent or family. He recalled a response he said he received from an anonymous player, who was told by the team owner to not protest.
“I remember one, which—playing this back is a little bit of a mindblowing conversation,” he said. “I had one player that came back, and was like, ‘My owner told me that I can’t protest.’ And that was an unfathomable sentence to me.”
When asked if he was told by a team owner or the NFL commissioner to “cut it out,” Kaepernick responded, “They wouldn’t explicitly frame it that way, but it would be like, ‘Well, have you thought about doing something else?’”
Kaepernick’s initial protest consisted of him sitting down on the bench during the national anthem, which sparked a conversation with former Green Beret Nate Boyer, who advised him to kneel, so he could be alongside his teammates, instead of isolating himself.
The conversation starts at the 23-minute mark in the video below.
