Colin Kaepernick – former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and creator of the now-infamous kneeling stunt heard ‘round the world – announced that he is filing a grievance against the NFL for collusion.
Kaepernick alleges that the NFL colluded against him in keeping him from playing football due to his involvement in the national anthem protests that have driven down TV ratings. If the league is guilty of deceiving the public as to why Kaepernick is out of a job, they may not be the only guilty party.
How did Kaepernick deceive the American people?
A review of Kaepernick’s fairly-wealthy upbringing reveals that the league’s most controversial figure has some explaining to do regarding his positioning as the NFL’s empathizer-in-chief on inner-city living.
While Kaepernick could certainly sympathize with inner-city youth of today, to say he can relate is a bit of stretch.
Let us count the ways.
Kaepernick’s own birthplace is the French-named Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, which was named #32 on Money Magazine’s “Best Places to Live” in America in 2017.
That’s a far cry from the south side of Chicago.
So is the town in which he spent most of his childhood.
The former 49ers star grew up in the central California farming town of Turlock, a well-to-do suburb of Fresno, where the average home price is nearly $300,000 in a state in which the average home price is $400,000 and in many towns, much higher into the multi-millions.
According to the sports website Jock Bio, while attending high school the young Kaepernick attended several football camps in just one summer to perfect his skills. It’s worth noting that football camp costs can run into the thousands, even for just one week. If Kaepernick attended camps for multiple weeks over the period of a summer as a teenager, the price tag would easily have been several thousands of dollars.
Not exactly a deprived upbringing.
This is not to discount Kaepernick’s experience as an adopted child of mixed race – an experience that no doubt had a profound and deeply personal impact that few can understand; however, his well-to-do lifestyle cuts against the argument that he can relate to the underprivileged, and it merits discussion.
Hypocritical liberals often suggest that a person such as billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos can’t possibly be genuine in her crusade to help underprivileged children nor relate to their plight because she herself is a wealthy individual. In that same regard, the argument for Kaepernick then must be the along the same lines.
Liberals can’t have it both ways.
Akin to DeVos, Kaepernick lives in some pretty posh duds himself these days.
Last year, Kaepernick placed his Silicon Valley home on the market for $2.9 million. He recently purchased a $3.1 million condominium in Tribeca. At 1,733 square feet, he paid nearly $2,000 per square foot, which means that Kaepernick paid more for one square foot of space than most single mothers on the south side of Chicago can afford for their monthly rent.
Now, no one should begrudge the NFL star for his wealth — he has a right to sign any contract he wants in a private industry and to spend what he wants on homes, cars, and more. After all, this is America.
However, the portrait of his life fails to reveal an upbringing that is anywhere close to the plight he claims to feel for inner-city kids today.
Nothing could be more deceptive than for a wealthy man who hails from a lifetime of comfortable means to feign that he understands the plight of inner-city kids and worse, to stir up strife among his nation in doing so.
For that, Kaepernick just might be guilty of the very “collusion” and deception he accuses the NFL of perpetrating upon him.
Jennifer Kerns (@JenKernsUSA) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. A GOP communications strategist, she served as spokeswoman for the California Republican Party, recalls in Colorado, and California’s Prop. 8. Previously, she served as a writer for the 2016 U.S. presidential debates for FOX News.
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