Eric Reid is one of the better young safeties in the NFL.
There is no reason he shouldn’t have been on a squad in training camp, but when you talk about racism and police brutality, MAGA doesn’t like that and since a lot of the NFL is MAGA, it almost cost him his career. Thankfully, the Panthers new owner is nothing like the old one.
Reid, 26, said “without a doubt” his collusion case against the NFL will continue. He also said he still is considering other ways to protest social injustice outside of taking a knee during the national anthem as he and former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began doing in 2016.
“I’m still evaluating the scope of our country, and I’ll make that decision later,” Reid said on Monday, his first interview since signing with Carolina on Thursday.
Reid said he’s happy to be back in football. He also made it clear he feels as strong as ever on the issue of empowerment that led him to protest.
“I’ll put it this way,” Reid said. “Next year will be 2019. It will mark 400 years since the first slave touched the soil in this country. That’s 400 years of systemic depression, that slavery, Jim Crow, new Jim Crow, mass incarceration, you name it … the Great Depression, they came out with a New Deal, black people didn’t have access to those government stimulus packages. … We didn’t have access to those programs, the GI Bill, Social Security, home loans, none of that.
“I mean, I felt those emotions time and time again,” Reid said. “You can’t live in your own house in America without getting killed. It’s powerful. I will keep speaking for my people.”
“So this has been happening since my people have gotten here. So I just felt the need to say something about it.”
Good for him for standing his ground, he will be on the right side of history.