Former NFL player and current NBC analyst Rodney Harrison stepped into the Colin Kaepernick fray this morning and managed to be both stupid and wrong. As just about everyone else has equivocated on Kaepernick's protest during the national anthem, Harrison said he supported his right to protest—and even said he thought Kaepernick's heart was in the right place—but he felt that the 49ers quarterback went about it the wrong way. For the life of me, I don't understand why every single person commenting on this feels like they know the rules to properly protesting an issue—maybe my Protests for Dummies book got lost in the mail—but everyone is an expert. Is it really that hard to acknowledge the right to protest and just say, "Personally, I wouldn't have done that, but I'm not him"? Am I insane for thinking that is a reasonable approach? Probably.But Harrison didn't stop there. He then said that Kaepernick isn't black, and doesn't actually understand the issue he is protesting.
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Now, just so we are clear, Colin Kaepernick is, in fact, black. His father was African-American and his mother was white, and he was later adopted by a white family. I'm not sure if Rodney Harrison is simply unaware of this fact, or if he is making some larger point about his upbringing, but either way he's wrong.