Kaepernick’s combine comments baffling

“What they don’t want you to understand is what’s being established is a power dynamic. Before they put you on the field, teams poke, prod and examine you searching for any defect that might affect your performance. No boundary respect. No dignity left intact.”
These were words spoken by football player turned activist Colin Kaepernick on his Netflix series “Colin in Black & White.” What is he speaking about when he says those words? The NFL draft combine, which leads to him comparing the NFL draft to a slave auction.
Huh?
You may already have your opinion well-molded about Kaepernick. Some think he’s a civil rights pioneer bringing much-needed attention to social issues. Other think he’s a disrespectful crybaby. He has every right to kneel for the national anthem. In turn, people have every right to criticize him for it. We’ve had that debate a hundred times over already.
This take by Kaepernick, however, is dead wrong.
For starters, people of all colors are selected in the NFL Draft. It isn’t just black people getting poked and prodded at the NFL combine. White people get it too, as does any other color of person invited there. Why? The owners of these football teams are about to invest millions of dollars in these players. Coaches and general managers are going to have their jobs and livelihoods decided by how the players they select perform. Is it so wrong for them all to want to make sure the players are up to the challenge?
Secondly, every player at that combine is there voluntarily. Nobody drags them there, nobody forces them there. They are there because they want to be there. Why? Because it’s an opportunity to show off how good they are at something they have been training for all their lives. They are football players, and they want to demonstrate just how good they are at those skills they have spent countless hours mastering. Actual slaves weren’t doing the work they were doing voluntarily.
Perhaps most importantly, those players at the combine will eventually be in the NFL, which means they will be rewarded quite a handsomely for their work. Slaves were not rewarded handsomely, as we know. Paying millionaires to play a game they love is not the same as chattel slavery, and to suggest it is minimizes what actual slaves went through. It’s no different than people who compare vaccine mandates to the Holocaust. It’s gross, it’s wrong and it’s a slap in the face to people who experienced actual genocide.
We’re guessing that anybody who was actually a slave would gladly trade their lives for Kaepernick’s life, or any NFL players’ lives. Nobody needs to build an underground railroad for NFL players. They are doing just fine.
The NFL minimum salary is almost $700,000, and it’s to play a game. Kaepernick also is the face of Nike, which actually does use slave labor overseas.
Swing and a miss, Colin.