Abdul-Jabbar: Insulting Colin Kaepernick says more about our patriotism than his
What should horrify Americans is not Kaepernick’s choice to remain seated during the national anthem, but that nearly 50 years after Ali was banned from boxing for his stance and Tommie Smith and John Carlos’s raised fists caused public ostracization and numerous death threats, we still need to call attention to the same racial inequities. Failure to fix this problem is what’s really un-American here.
Abdul-Jabbar said that Kaepernick was expressing his patriotism in a manner that should make Americans proud.
In an
op-ed for the Washington Post, Abdul-Jabbar pointed out that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s
decision to not stand for the national anthem is an expression of the First Amendment’s right to free speech, and that anyone criticizing him for his statement is misunderstanding the entire point of the U.S. Constitution: