Colin Kaepernick tweets on Independence Day: "We reject your celebration of white supremacy"

Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick on Independence Day tweeted a message accompanied by a video that features actor James Earl Jones reading from the Frederick Douglass's 1852 speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"

"Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of 'independence', while you enslaved our ancestors" Kaepernick tweeted. "We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all," he wrote.

In the video, James Earl Jones reads from the Douglass speech as images, art and videos related slavery, racism, and police brutality appear on-screen.

"What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence?" Jones says in the video. "Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice embodied in that Declaration of Independence extended to us?There's not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour."

Fox News noted that Kaepernick also shared the same video on July 4, 2019.

Kaepernick's kneeling protests during the playing of the national anthem sparked controversy and debate during his time in the NFL, and the issue of American athletes kneeling during the anthem continues to generate controversy today.

National attention recently has been focused on racial issues and policing following the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minnesota.