Kaepernick’s Fight Against Slavery

Former football quarterback Colin Kaepernick, a mulatto who was raised by a White couple in Wisconsin, is suing the National Football League for colluding against his effort to abolish slavery… 152 years after it was abolished by constitutional amendment. He literally makes this accusation. ESPN reports:

Free-agent quarterback Colin Kaepernickhas filed a grievance under the latest collective bargaining agreement against NFL owners for collusion, according to his attorney, Mark Geragos.

…The filing, which demands an arbitration hearing on the matter, says the NFL and its owners “have colluded to deprive Mr. Kaepernick of employment rights in retaliation for Mr. Kaepernick’s leadership and advocacy for equality and social justice and his bringing awareness to peculiar institutions still undermining racial equality in the United States.”

Peculiar institutions. This term, as Wikipedia explains, has a specific historical meaning:

“(Our) peculiar institution” was a euphemism for slavery and its economic ramifications in the American South. “Peculiar”, in this expression, means “one’s own”, that is, it refers to something distinctive to or characteristic of a particular place or people.

Kaepernick’s accusation is interesting. Can he prove that the NFL has colluded to keep Blacks in slavery a century and a half after the peculiar institution was abolished? And if so, how has NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell been able to accomplish a feat which President Jefferson Davis and General Robert E. Lee were unable to accomplish? Inquiring minds want to know.