Former NFL player Rodney Harrison stepped in it Tuesday. From ABC:
In an interview with iHeartRadio, Harrison said Tuesday that [San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin] Kaepernick has the right to stand for what he believes, but he "has to understand there might be consequences and might be backlash to what he's saying."Regardless, wasn't this a discussion about equality? Notice how Harrison was quick to exclude Kaepernick from the discussion when he thought Kaepernick was white. When he discovered the truth, Harrison then gave Kaepernick a reluctant and derogatory "mixed" pass.
"I tell you this, I'm a black man. And Colin Kaepernick -- he's not black," Harrison said. "He cannot understand what I face and what other young black men and black people face, or people of color face, on an every single [day] basis. When you walk in a grocery store, and you might have $2,000 or $3,000 in your pocket and you go up into a Foot Locker and they're looking at you like you about to steal something.
"You know, I don't think he faces those type of things that we face on a daily basis."
Kaepernick, the biological child of a white mother and black father, was adopted and raised by white parents. He has been outspoken on his Twitter account on civil rights issues and in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Harrison took to Twitter later Tuesday to apologize for the remarks, saying he "never even knew [Kaepernick] was mixed."
I have bad news for Harrison and any other black people who think like him: If you want "equality" with whites and all other races, we have to be a part of the discussion. Excluding us because we are white and can't possibly understand the black experience completely disrespects our EQUAL integrity as human beings.
Equality isn't just about the end results, but also the process to reach those results. No side gets to decide and/or run the process alone. Equality is a shared endeavor. Excluding people from it due to the color of their skin is rather...racist.
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