The Colin Kaepernick debate looks like it’s about to get even more heated.
The San Francisco 49ers quarterback ruffled some feathers with a polarizing decision to sit for the national anthem before a preseason game last Friday versus the Green Bay Packers. It’s expected he’ll do the same Thursday night against the San Diego Chargers.
Kaepernick’s decision, he says, is based his unwillingness to “show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
However, as The Big Lead pointed out Thursday, Kaepernick’s protest appears to have started during training camp. USA TODAY got these photos of the quarterback wearing socks with cops depicted as pigs on them.
The choice of socks theoretically could be the biggest coincidence of all time, but it’s not reckless to assume it’s instead a protest to a string of killings of black men by police over the last year or so.
“There’s a lot of things that need to change. One specifically is police brutality,” Kaepernick told reporters earlier this week. There’s people being murdered unjustly and not being held accountable. Cops are getting paid leave for killing people. That’s not right. That’s not right by anyone’s standards.
Regardless, it’s unlikely this story goes away any time soon, at least not as long as Kaepernick is on an NFL roster, which is looking more and more like an uncertainty as the 2016 season is about to begin.
Photos via John Hefti/USA TODAY Sports Images
