Pop star Rihanna said she turned down performing in this year’s Super Bowl halftime show to stand in solidarity with NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Speaking to Vogue, the award-winning artist said “absolutely” when she was asked about rumors that she had turned down the performance.
“I couldn’t dare do that. For what? Who gains from that? Not my people,” Rihanna, 31, said. “I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way.”
Kaepernick, who played for the San Francisco 49ers from 2011 to 2016, was the first NFL player to kneel during the National Anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice. Kaepernick’s refusal to stand for the anthem prompted some football players on other NFL teams and athletes in other sports to join him in the protest.
He was featured in a Nike ad last year that stoked outrage among some conservatives. The video includes Kaepernick and others who promote social justice causes and ends with the 31-year-old football player saying, “Believe in something even if it means sacrificing everything.”
The video won the 2019 Creative Arts Emmy Award for outstanding commercial.
