Rodney Harrison didn’t know Colin Kaepernick was biracial

NBC’s Rodney Harrison retracted his statement about San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick because he didn’t know Kaepernick was biracial.

Former NFL defensive back with the San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots and NBC ‘Sunday Night Football’ analyst Rodney Harrison certainly put his foot in his mouth on a Houston sports talk radio show on Monday morning.

Harrison went off on San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, saying, “he’s not black,” in the wake of the Kaepernick’s choice to protest the national anthem for minorities rights in America. The only problem is Kaepernick is of mixed ethnicity; his birth mother is a Caucasian woman and his biological father is African-American.

Harrison put a series of Tweets on Monday afternoon to apologize for the embarrassing incident on the Houston radio show.

It doesn’t matter that he apologized so quickly. Conservative NBC is almost certainly going to punish Harrison for his comments on Kaepernick’s complexion. Kaepernick’s upbringing by his adopted white parents was well documented during his rise to national prominence during the 2012 NFL season.

Kaepernick may have created a lot of enemies in his decision to sit out the playing of the national anthem at 49ers games, but it’s better than the uninformed banter that Harrison spit out on a Houston area radio show.

Next: 2016 NFL season: Record predictions for all 32 teams

Whether or not Kaepernick is going about bringing attention to racial discrimination in the United States the right way, Harrison questioning how black Kaepernick is or isn’t can’t sit well with people paying attention to this highly publicized protest.