Before we get into what Kaepernick said let me ask you a simple question.
Do you think any cop in the country would have shot a white man 7 times at close range with his 4-year-old child and girlfriend in the car?
If your answer is YES, then you are lying to yourself.
Philando Castile was murdered simply because he was black. When you are black you are automatically seen as a threat. When Castile told the murdering cop he had a gun (legally I might add), years of systematic racism, prejudice and stereotypes filled that cop’s mind.
He didn’t see a man, he didn’t see a baby in the car, he didn’t see a woman driving, he saw an animal. Was he scared, probably, but why?
He was scared out of his mind because of the color of Castile’s skin. The reason he is free today is because the jury probably feel the same way. They probably would say things like Albert Breer did when Colin Kaepernick brought up an accurate depiction of police.
A system that perpetually condones the killing of people, without consequence, doesn't need to be revised, it needs to be dismantled! pic.twitter.com/BVVPVZIQyD
— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) June 16, 2017
I think @Kaepernick7 has done a lot of good. Comparing cops to the slave patrol is where he loses me. No better than wearing the pig socks.
— Albert Breer (@AlbertBreer) June 19, 2017
Often times white people don’t want to address the issue at hand, so they lash out at other things, like kneeling and socks instead of looking deeper into why someone would say what Kaepernick said.
Slave Patrols were actually the first form of police in this country.
Their main objectives were to keep slaves obedient by force because they had a healthy fear of resistance. As the years have gone on that same objective has been enforced in black communities. Go back and look at any decade and you will see 1000s of examples of police doing their best try to keep black people obedient and using force to do it.
As Malcolm X once said, how do poor communities have the most police, but still the highest crime.
In 2017 they aren’t running around in hoods (well some aren’t), but they are still protected by the thought that black people are threats, thugs, criminals and can be exterminated without having to worry about being punished for it.
People like to say “well black people kill a lot of black people”, my answer to that is white people kill a lot of white people, but also when black people commit any type of crime they are punished SEVERELY no matter how minor or major. Victim or criminal black people are villainized in the media, while white people can be mass murderers and they will be shown in the best possible light possible.
Some white people like to ignore this when it doesn’t effect them. They don’t care about black people, because they are have the comfort of being white and don’t have to worry about a cop shooting them in broad daylight with their baby in car. It is a burden they don’t live with and don’t remotely try to understand.
When police commit crimes and at times murder against black people they are RARELY punished at all and in some cases they are celebrated or promoted. Darren Wilson got a million from the media for killing Mike Brown.
When Kaepernick speaks about THEY he isn’t speaking about the good officers out there, he is speaking on the ones who will kill you, me, your brother, sister or best friend just for being black.
If you are white and you can’t see that, you are no better than the Slave Patrol that started in the 1700s and still roam this country in 2017.