On the same day that Disney announced an ESPN docuseries deal with Colin Kaepernick, a former sportswriter for the network unleashed a tirade against the former NFL player.
Jason Whitlock took particular umbrage with Kaepernick’s July 4 tweet, in which the former San Francisco quarterback called Independence Day a “celebration of white supremacy.”
“Like all things Kaepernick and most things limited to 280 characters, Kaepernick’s tweet heard ‘round the world is breathtakingly uninformed and devoid of substance,” Whitlock wrote in a column published by Outkick, the headline of which dubbed Kaepernick a “fraud.” “It’s a divisive hot take packaged as righteous indignation,” he added.
Kaepernick’s tweet, which featured the words of Frederick Douglass read by actor James Earl Jones as images of police and racial brutality played above, received more than 170,000 likes and 60,000 retweets, which Whitlock suggested was evidence of Twitter’s “corrosive power” to tilt political discourse.
“Social media amplifies and legitimizes the voices of idiots, anarchists and race-baiters,” Whitlock continued. “Without Twitter, Colin Kaepernick would be a flash-in-the-pan, long-forgotten quarterback, not much different from Stan Humphries, Jake Delhomme, Kerry Collins and Neil O’Donnell.”
Whitlock, who noted that Kaepernick celebrated Independence Day in a tweet from 2011, outlined the history of slavery that he said was a “global phenomenon” perpetrated by people of all creeds. He argued that the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence were documents that began the movement to rid the world of slavery.
“In 2020, given all that we know and all the blood spilled in pursuit of the ideals Jefferson expressed, The Declaration of Independence is the most important document in the African-American journey,” Whitlock wrote.
Whitlock also rejected the notion that black people in the United States should view the institution of slavery as central to their identity.
“I respect the history of my ancestors,” Whitlock wrote. “I take pride in our rise. But slavery does not remotely define my identity. It doesn’t tell you anything about me. I don’t look at the world through the eyes of a slave.”
