Mariah Carey called out the National Football League’s hypocrisy after it pledged its commitment to end systemic racism in a Super Bowl advert on Sunday 7 February.
The commercial demonstrated the importance of diversity to football and reaffirmed the pledge the NFL made in June last year to commit $250m (£182m) over the next decade to combatting systemic racism.
Carey took to Twitter to mock the ad by giving a shout-out to former quarterback Colin Kaepernick, whose peaceful protest against racism in 2016 – when he kneeled during the National Anthem – resulted in him being effectively blacklisted from the NFL.
“Happy Colin Kaepernick Appreciation Day!" Carey tweeted.
The singer was far from the only person to throw shade on the NFL for their Super Bowl ad, as Kaepernick’s name was trending on Twitter after it aired.
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"The NFL creating a commercial that shows players kneeling, putting ‘Breonna Taylor’ on the back of their helmets, and ends with the league committing $250 million to end systemic racism must have @Kaepernick7 feeling some type of way," one user wrote.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said of Kaepernick last week: “I said very clearly back in June that we wish we had listened to our players earlier, and we had a lot of players that were coming and bringing these issues to us.”
