Colin Kaepernick Missed His Chance

The 2016-17 NFL season may be remembered as the year the sport succumbed to political correctness to its own detriment. Thanks to Roger Goodell’s spinelessness and Colin Kaepernick’s viral disrespect of the national anthem, TV ratings are down 10 to 15 percent.

After complaining all season about the “racial inequality and oppression” of blacks in America, Kaepernick, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, has refused to stand for the national anthem.

How can he be taken seriously if he didn’t even vote?

Yet he also disclosed this past week that he didn’t vote.

Considering that one’s vote is a critical method for ensuring one’s voice is heard, it should come as no surprise that Kaepernick didn’t bother to avail himself of it.

Even if his vote was for a third party or to write in Louis Farrakhan, Kaepernick didn’t even follow up his weekly televised protests on the football field with a literal protest vote. Heck, Gloria La Riva was on the ballot in California. She was the choice for the Socialism and Liberation party, and has been a champion for minorities for more than 40 years.

Did he even look into her candidacy?

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He has stated, “I’ve been very disconnected from the systematic oppression as a whole. So, for me, it’s another face that’s going to be the face of that system of oppression. And to me, it didn’t really matter who went in there. The system still remains intact that oppresses people of color.”

It’s a bizarre thing to say for a man-child playing in a league that is 67 percent black with an average annual salary of $2 million — and his is substantially higher.

It’s even more bizarre when one considers that nearly 100 million other people failed to vote. If Kaepernick truly wants to change the system, then the first thing he should do is quit the NFL and begin organizing the 100 million self-disenfranchised and get America to make changes.

Kaepernick is free to express his dissatisfaction any way he chooses. This is America. If he thinks both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are racists, that’s his opinion to hold and express. Yet failing to vote? At all? For anything?

Related: Boycotting Those National Anthem Protesters

He lives in California, where there were 17 ballot propositions and countless local races. Is the system so utterly racist that voting for any of these candidates or issues would somehow support the system he decries?

If Kaepernick truly wanted to make a difference, he has national media attention. He could do so much more.

Instead, he comes off a whiny, ungrateful, entitled football player whose best years are already behind him. The 49ers are having a miserable season and have created a mountain of fans thrilled at this outcome. Because his cause is associated with the Left, the Left naturally champions him. Of course, both the Left and Kaepernick are making the same mistake that liberalism always makes.

That mistake is to complain but never offer a solution, much less one that reflects reality. Standing up for a moral cause is terrific, but without the appropriate follow-through, it’s just another voice that is increasingly easy to dismiss. If anything, Kaepernick’s lack of engagement does more to set that cause back than anything else.