Trtuhdig -The blowback was as unhinged as it was utterly predictable. Earlier this week, Nike announced it would be partnering with Colin Kaepernick for a new ad campaign, despite the fact that the former 49ers quarterback has been out of the league since 2016. Within 24 hours, President Trump condemned the move as a “terrible message” to the country and the nation’s angriest young white men were setting fire to their own property in protest.
Police unions, among the president’s more fervid supporters, proved no exception. The National Fraternal Order of Police has deemed the ad an “insult” to law enforcement, while the National Association of Police Organizations went so far as to call for a boycott of Nike. But one such union has resisted this jingoistic hysteria and thinly veiled racism—the National Black Police Association, which published a powerful letter in support of Kaepernick Thursday.
“The African American community makes a sacrifice each time a life is unjustly lost at the hands of the very people who should protect them,” writes Sonia Y.W. Pruitt, the union’s national chairwoman and a police lieutenant in Maryland. “A sacrifice is made each time the criminal justice system treats people of color as less than. A sacrifice is made each time a letter is sent asking officers to boycott a corporation, without asking those very African American officers who are most affected, what their opinion is.”
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