Colin Kaepernick contrasted his lived experience as a Black man with the “colorblind” approach he says his white adoptive parents took at home — and BlazeTV host Jason Whitlock pushed back, crediting those parents for Kaepernick’s success and arguing his later identity focus changed his career.
What Kaepernick said
In an interview on The Karen Hunter Show, Hunter asked Kaepernick how he thinks “about the term ‘biracial’ in relation to [his] black identity” and whether it resonates with him.
“I identify as a black man,” Kaepernick responded. “It’s how I show up in the world. It’s how I’m treated in the world. That’s politically how I approach the world. Biracial, my parents knew I was black and told me I was black at a young age.”
He added that his parents “operated … within a sense of color blindness. Like, hey, we’re all family, like, everybody’s going to be treated equal. And that’s what it is. But that’s not how the world is going to operate or treat me when I walk outside these doors.”
“I think their exposure to blackness was also whatever was out in the media at a high level,” he said.
Whitlock’s rebuttal
Reacting to Kaepernick’s comments, Jason Whitlock said, “He’s acting like, ‘Oh, what a disadvantage it was.’” He followed with rhetorical questions: “Don’t you see how well these black parents are doing preparing their kids for success? Haven’t you looked at their SAT scores? Haven’t you looked at their graduation rates? Haven’t you looked at their marriage rates?”
Whitlock argued Kaepernick’s parents helped him thrive. “Now they treated him like they treated a kid that would have been their own. They wanted him to be colorblind. And he turned out, for the most part, for a good stretch, pretty successful. Stayed out of trouble, made it to college, made it to the NFL,” he said, adding, “It almost feels like what they did worked.”
Whitlock then linked Kaepernick’s later emphasis on racial identity to his professional arc: “Once Colin Kaepernick became obsessed with his blackness, that’s when all the trouble started and that’s where the career and everything started going a different direction.” He also called Kaepernick “clueless.”
