Nike's New Kaepernick Shoes Specifically Celebrate the Day He First Knelt for Anthem
Nike plans to release a new shoe honoring former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick just days after Christmas.
The “Nike Air Force 1” low top has a black and white color scheme and an “icy translucent outsole with the date Colin first took a knee in protest ‘8/14/16’ on the right shoe finishes the design,” SneakerBarDetroit reported.
The shoe includes a hang tag with Kaepernick’s number 7 on it and an image of his face on the back of shoes.
Colin Kaepernick’s Nike Air Force 1 features the date he first kneeled during an NFL gamehttps://t.co/X4B2Qakmdh pic.twitter.com/ZdXFDGy23g
— Sneaker News (@SneakerNews) December 16, 2019
The shoe is to be released Dec. 28.
The Washington Post reported in November that National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell encouraged teams to consider signing Kaepernick and quietly backed a workout session the free agent held for scouts that month in Georgia.
Seven or eight team representatives came to the workout, but “Kaepernick appears no closer to signing with an NFL club,” according to The Post.
Kaepernick filed a legal grievance with the NFL in 2017, claiming owners were colluding to keep him out of the league.
The 32-year-old argued the reason he has not been signed with a team after leaving the San Francisco 49ers when his contract ended in 2017 was that the NFL team owners were working together to blackball him in response to his national anthem protests and other social activism.
The Wall Street Journal reported in March that the NFL settled with Kaepernick and former 49ers teammate Eric Reid, who knelt during the anthem, for something less than $10 million.
Kaepernick has not played since the 2016 season.
The former quarterback explained the reason for kneeling during the Star-Spangled Banner to NFL Media’s Steve Wyche.
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said. “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
That same summer of 2016, Kaepernick attended a team practice with socks depicting pigs in police officer hats, according to The Daily Wire.
He wrote on social media that “I wore these socks, in the past, because the rogue cops that are allowed to hold positions in police departments, not only put the community in danger, but also put the cops that have the right intentions in danger by creating an environment of tension and mistrust.”
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