Aug. 28, 2016 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
21:28
3395 The Truth About The Colin Kaepernick National Anthem Controversy
On Friday August 26th, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick made headlines for his refusal to stand during the national anthem due to the country's treatment of racial minorities. Stefan Molyneux breaks down the unspoken factors in the latest National Football League scandal. What is the truth about the Colin Kaepernick national anthem controversy?Sources: http://www.fdrurl.com/Colin-KaepernickFreedomain Radio is 100% funded by viewers like you. Please support the show by signing up for a monthly subscription or making a one time donation at: http://www.freedomainradio.com/donate
Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Maine Radio.
I hope you're doing very well.
So, you probably have been aware that on Friday, August 26, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick made headlines for his refusal to stand during the national anthem due to the country's treatment of racial minorities.
Now, a little bit about his history before we get into the ramifications of this action.
So, Kaepernick was put up for adoption by his white biological mother, Heidi Zebranski, now Russo, when he was six weeks of age.
She, in fact, is a six-foot-tall now nurse.
She played volleyball, basketball, and ran track in high school.
Now, Kaepernick's biological maternal grandfather, James Zebranski, said, Heidi's thoughts and feelings at the time were her own, of course, but we thought she would keep him.
We don't know why his father has never acknowledged him or why his mother has never said who he is.
We've never met the man.
We don't even know who he is.
The only details that the family knows is that Kaepernick's father was six foot two inches tall and black.
Now, Colin Kaepernick was adopted by Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, a white family from Wisconsin.
Now, Wisconsin, and he's actually 28 years old, Wisconsin back in the day would, I guess, be even whiter, but only 5.7% black population, 1.2% mixed race now, or at least recently, less in the past.
His biological mother, Heidi Russo, said, Colin Kaepernick said, I knew I was different to my parents and my older brother and sister.
I never felt I was supposed to be white or black either.
My parents just wanted to let me be who I needed to be.
Colin also said, we used to go on these summer driving vacations and stay at motels.
And every year in the lobby of every motel, the same thing always happened.
And it only got worse as I got older and taller.
It didn't matter how close I stood to my family.
Somebody would walk up to me, a real nervous manager, and say, excuse me, is there something I can help you with?
Now, that's a challenge.
I mean, I really, really understand that.
But it's confusing for people outside the family, because if the manager assumes that Colin is an adopted son, when he's not, and he ignores Colin, so to speak, not thinking he's the next person in line, then Colin might say, well, the white people got served and I got ignored, but it's because they thought he was part of the family.
If they don't think he's part of the family, they're going to come up and talk to him and ask him how they can help him, and then he maybe feels that he's not considered part of the family.
So it's kind of a no-win situation in some ways, or you could interpret the worst of every motive in just about every situation.
Colin said, my dad, being a businessman, constantly talked to me about carrying myself in a certain way and treating people with respect.
And I think that's something that's carried over throughout my life.
It's how I deal with certain situations.
So, I think it's safe to say, Colin is the starting quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers and has a degree in business management from the University of Nevada and was a 4.0 student when he was younger.
It's safe to say he's doing pretty well and, of course, a lot of that, I would assume, has to do with How great his parents seem to be, which we'll get into in a little bit down the road.
But looking at Colin's life as a whole, there's only one black person in his history, that's his biological father, who vanished.
And later, many years later, when he was an adult, when his biological mother got in touch with him, He said, I'd like to know more about my biological father, and she reached out to him, left a message or two, and didn't hear anything back.
So I would say that the people who've treated Colin the best happen to be white people, and the person who abandoned him was this biological black person.
Father, and that is a challenge.
Even his mom, who gave him up for adoption, did something probably quite good for him.
If she'd remained a single mother, he would not have had as many resources.
He may not have had as much money, almost certainly wouldn't have had as much money to pursue, what I assume was some pretty expensive training.
So she did a good deed by putting him up for adoption, an unselfish deed.
I mean, to let go of a child after six weeks must be completely agonizing.
So Colin went on to say, my racial heritage is something I want people to be well aware of.
I do want to be a representative of the African community, and I want to hold myself and dress myself in a way that reflects that.
I want black kids to see me and think, okay, he's carrying himself as a black man, and that's how a black man should carry himself.
He said, my parents told me from the time I can remember that, yeah, you're adopted, but this is your family.
I can remember my mom.
She tells me this story when I was little.
I was looking at her and I was like, why isn't my skin the same color as yours?
And she was like, oh, you're adopted, but I wish I had pretty brown skin like you.
That's something that they made me feel like even though it wasn't necessarily my birth family, that's my family.
So kudos to the mom in particular.
Colin said also, everything they did, they tried to make it uplifting.
They tried to make it special.
They tried to make it a positive environment.
Looking back, I think that was the biggest thing.
Just the love and affection that they showed was what made everything so smooth for me.
And how has that turned out?
Well, I mean, of course, really good parenting is no guarantee of your kid's financial success, but according to SpotTrack, quote, Colin Kaepernick signed a six-year $114 million contract with the San Francisco 49ers, including a $12,328,766 signing bonus, $61 million guaranteed, and an average annual salary of $19 million.
In 2016, Kaepernick will earn a base salary of $11,900,000, a roster bonus of $2 million, and a workout bonus of $400,000.
Kaepernick has a cap hit of $15,890,753.
So what happened?
Well, Colin Kaepernick did not stand for the national anthem, and he later said, I am not going to stand up to show pride and a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.
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.
This is not something that I'm going to run by anybody.
I am not looking for approval.
I have to stand up for people that are oppressed.
If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.
The San Francisco 49ers made a statement, quote, The national anthem is, and always will be, a special part of the pregame ceremony.
It is an opportunity to honor our country and reflect on the great liberties we are afforded as its citizens.
In respecting such American principles as freedom of religion and freedom of expression, we recognize the right of an individual to choose and participate, or not, in our celebration of the national anthem.
NFL statement, quote, players are encouraged but not required to stand during the playing of the national anthem.
Interestingly enough, Kaepernick is engaged to be married to Black Lives Matter activist and hip-hop radio personality DJ Nessa Diab and also converted to Islam during the last football off-season.
In 2014, the NFL fined Kaepernick $11,025 for, quote, inappropriate language for supposedly using a racial slur towards Chicago Bears player Lamar Houston after throwing an interception.
Colin Kaepernick said, It will be appealed.
I didn't say anything.
The player that I supposedly said something to has been quoted saying that I didn't say anything, and I don't know him, so it's not like he would have a reason to just randomly stick up for me.
According to coach Jim Harbo, quote, Colin says he didn't say anything.
This person says what they say and somebody else heard something else.
I don't have a stance.
You can only imagine.
I don't have a stance because I don't know.
I didn't hear it.
Colin's always been truthful 100% of the time.
After appeal, the fine was reduced to $5,512 due to a lack of evidence the slur was used.
Collins said, quote, So, One general theory out there with race relations not just in America but around the world is that all discrepancies in representation in general are the result of racism usually on the part of white people.
So let's put that theory to the test.
So this is from the U.S. Census report July 2015.
It's a little confusing because Hispanics are kind of lumped in with whites but with that white slash Hispanic 77.1 percent of the population Whites are 61.6% of the population, 17.6% identifies as Hispanic or Latino.
So 77.1%.
Blacks, 13.3%.
Asians, 5.6%.
Other 1.4%.
Two or more races, 2.6%.
So if we look at the NFL and the numbers diverge significantly from these numbers, we can assume, based on general race theory, that there must be racism in the NFL. Looking at the numbers.
So if all discrepancies in numbers must be due to racism, then there must be pro-black and anti-white racism in the National Football League.
I don't believe that there is, but that's the general theory, although it generally only gets applied one way.
So putting these two together, we can see on the top line here, United States population versus NFL players, sort of gap analysis.
Whites are 28.6% of the NFL players, but 77.1% of the population.
Blacks are 13.3% of the US population, but close to 70% of NFL players.
Asians are 1.1% of NFL players, but 5.6%.
of US population and other, it's relatively close at 1.6 to 1.4.
So if we look at Asians, we could say, well, you know, there may be cultural differences, less of an interest and so on, but that's not the same as saying That Asians are under-representative because of an anti-Asian racial bias in the NFL. We have other reasons, and it's always important to look for other reasons, not just because there's no such thing as racism.
There is such a thing as racism, of course, but it is not the only answer, and it tends in many ways to be the most disempowering answer, certainly if 100% of discrepancies are put up on the altar of racism.
So the question is, are various ethnic groups acting the same?
And if not, why not?
Well, if we just look at children living with mother only, From 1960 to the present, we can see that whites have gone from 6% or 7% to 18.5%.
Hispanics didn't have data for earlier, but starting in the early 1980s, just under 20% to now 27.5%.
And blacks from 1960 went from 20% to 48.6%.
So there's a divergence here.
Now, of course, mother-only households have significant problems.
The parents have less time, because it's a single parent, less time for the kids to Tends to be higher levels of poverty and dysfunction and so on.
So these are issues.
And if we say, ah, well, it's to do with racism, the challenge is then to explain why blacks and Hispanics had lower numbers in the past when we can assume that racism was more of an issue for blacks in 1960 than it would be in the present.
Births outside of marriage.
This is U.S. by race.
This is out of 2012.
So, 29% white children are birthed outside of a marriage.
Hispanic children, 54%.
Black children, 72%.
This rises to 82%, even 90% in some inner cities.
So, these are different choices, different behaviors.
And one of the great tragedies is the degree to which the black family was stable in the past.
80%, 85% of kids were born Into a stable two-parent black family in New York City in the 1920s.
So this number has changed as time has marched on, which does make the racism argument a little harder to process or maybe believe.
So, violent victimization perpetrators, if there's a black victim.
This is from 2012 to 2013, US Department of Justice National Crime Victimization Survey.
And we'll put, of course, links to sources of all of this below.
So when there was a black victim of a violent crime, 10.4% of the time, the perpetrator was white.
62.2% of the time, the perpetrator was black.
4.7% Hispanic.
15% other.
7.7% unknown.
In 2012 and 2013, blacks committed a yearly average of 560,600 violent crimes against whites, but whites committed only about 99,400 violent crimes against blacks.
Blacks were the attackers in 84.9% of the violent crimes involving blacks and whites.
So the racists are not acting the same as far as that goes.
Fatal police shootings.
The race of the suspect as of 2015.
So 50% of the fatal police shootings, the victim or the suspect was white.
26.1% black.
Hispanic, 17.4%.
Asian, 1.4%.
Other unknown, 5.1%.
The Asian is always a great challenge, of course, when it comes to looking at race relations in the United States.
Because if white people are generally racist, then Asians, of course, are non-white and should be treated in a negative way.
but that's not how it seems to happen at all.
Statistically, they commit fewer crimes, fewer of them in jail, and they have a higher per capita income than whites in white-majority countries, so it can't be ascribed simply to racism.
Now, this is from the Color of Crime...
Quote, It is reasonable to expect people of different races to find themselves in potentially lethal confrontations with the police in proportion to their likelihood to commit violent crime, with blacks most likely and Asians least likely.
So if you look at these numbers, they say, well, blacks are 13 and change percentage of the population, but 26.1% of the victims are fatal police shootings, but you must normalize by propensity to commit violent crime, and that's where the numbers change.
And it is a very fascinating story.
And this is just some of my personal observations.
I was really struck by the degree to which Colin was saying he's black.
But he's half white and half black.
And he was raised in Wisconsin, a pretty white state, by a white family who he loves and who seemed to have done a wonderful job of parenting.
And so if it was the other way around, in other words, if he had been raised by a black family, In a largely black neighborhood, and he kept insisting that he was white, that would be, I think, a bit odd.
So that's just a particular thing that I find a bit strange, and perhaps people can inform me in the comments below how that works.
Look, he's a professional athlete.
He spends a lot of time jumping through tires and running back and forth and so on.
He's a 6'4", 230-pound lean muscle of a quarterback.
He's not trained in...
Statistical analysis, logic, reason, or any of those kinds of things.
It may not be that you come to me for football advice or a professional footballer for a philosophical analysis of the state of the world.
And there is some racial politics in football these days.
I'm sure you remember several Los Angeles Rams players recently came into the football field with their hands up to promote the False, hands up, don't shoot narrative that was associated with Michael Brown.
The Dallas Cowboys players were not permitted to put stickers on their helmets to remember the five police officers who were murdered recently in Dallas.
And I've made this case before, and I really can't make it often enough.
I think it's all about the parenting.
One of the great tragedies, of course, was that he was abandoned by his father.
Colin was abandoned by his black father, and his black father even relatively recently was not returning phone calls placed by his biological mother.
And that is tragic.
If this had not happened, in other words, if the mom and the dad had stayed together, then the incident he talked about in the hotel wouldn't have happened, because you'd have had a white mother, a black father, a mixed-race child, and everybody would have known they were a family.
So it's not just weird racism on the part of white people that makes this situation confusing.
It's the choice of the father to leave and of the mother, and we can assume subsequent to the father leaving, the mother made a decision to put Colin up for adoption.
So it may be that the black father got the ball rolling, and I think that absence is particularly painful for particularly a mixed-race child.
But the parenting is really, really important.
And by all the reports, Rick and Teresa Kaepernick were excellent parents.
Isn't that the real privilege that's different in the world?
Those who are parented well and peacefully and delicately and sensitively and empathetically and with inspiration and inclusion and love, that's the real privilege, I think, that occurs in the world.
Isn't it possible that Kaepernick could have talked about the need for better parenting?
I mean, he says that he wants engagement and involvement in improving things in the black community, which I think is a wonderful thing.
According to a recent study of 20,000 kindergartners and their parents, black parents are the most likely to spank their children at 89% and Asian parents the least likely at 73%.
White and Hispanic parents fall in between at 79% and 80% respectively.
So that's a lot, you know, if there's a way to bring down spanking within the black community, because that would really help.
There is several studies, and these studies go back to the 1960s, suggest a relationship between corporal punishment and decreased cognitive ability.
In early adulthood, what a tragedy that is.
And again, I don't know if Rick and Teresa Kaepernick were spankers or if they had corporal punishment.
This is just the data.
But if he wanted to do something to improve things in the black community, I think that would be very important.
According to a recent study, about 94% of parents of children ages 3 to 4 in the U.S. report having spanked their children in the previous year, which I guess would be 2 to 3 years old.
Use of corporal punishment is linked to negative outcomes for children.
Delinquency, antisocial behavior, psychological problems, alcohol, drug abuse, you name it.
And the number of problem behaviors observed in adolescence is related to the amount of spanking a child receives.
In other words, it's a dose dependent.
The greater the age of the child, the more spanking, the stronger the relationship with dysfunction.
And for those of you who say, and I understand, well, spanking is not beating, and we all understand that beating is bad.
Dr.
Elizabeth Gershoff, who's been on this show a couple of times, says, and I quote, we as a society think of spanking and physical abuse as distinct behaviors.
Yet our research shows that spanking is linked with the same negative outcomes as abuse, just to a slightly lesser degree.
So if you're spanking and you think it's way better than beating, you're wrong.
It's very close to beating in terms of the negative effects.
Outcomes.
Increased aggression, antisocial behavior.
Maybe there's a relationship between the degree of corporal punishment that black children experience and some of their choices later in life.
It's certainly something worth exploring because how great could it be?
