Welcome back to the news cycle, Colin Kaepernick.

The former NFL quarterback finds himself in the headlines once again, this time after Nike decided to pull a shoe that he felt was racially insensitive.

The shoe in question featured the Betsy Ross flag, which is one of the early American flag designs. It features 13 stars that represent the original 13 colonies.

Here’s a snippet from the original story at the Wall Street Journal:

Nike Inc. NKE 1.74% is yanking a U.S.A.-themed sneaker featuring an early American flag after NFL star-turned-activist Colin Kaepernick told the company it shouldn’t sell a shoe with a symbol that he and others consider offensive, according to people familiar with the matter.

The sneaker giant created the Air Max 1 USA in celebration of the July Fourth holiday, and it was slated to go on sale this week. The heel of the shoe featured a U.S. flag with 13 white stars in a circle, a design created during the American Revolution and commonly referred to as the Betsy Ross flag.

…

“Nike has chosen not to release the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July as it featured the old version of the American flag,” a Nike spokeswoman said.

After images of the shoe were posted online, Mr. Kaepernick, a Nike endorser, reached out to company officials saying that he and others felt the Betsy Ross flag is an offensive symbol because of its connection to an era of slavery, the people said. Some users on social media responded to posts about the shoe with similar concerns. Mr. Kaepernick declined to comment.

The article goes on to say that the flag has been appropriated by some extremist groups, which means… what, exactly? Some idiots decided to bastardize an iconic American image, and we’re just going to let them have it? We’re just gonna discontinue use of that image everywhere else? No, of course not. It’s on us to say, “this is not your image, you’re not co-opting it, and you’re not altering what it stands for.”

So that’s the first order of business here, this ridiculous notion that we’re all supposed to cave because some extremist jabronies decided to twist an image into something it’s not.

Second, the Betsy Ross flag is not offensive. It flies all over Philadelphia, and the 13 stars design is literally a key component of the 76ers City Edition uniforms….

…and the circular stars are also featured prominently in the various logos used:

The Philadelphia Union logo similarly features the colonial stars. The Delaware Blue Coats name references local history as well.

So, no, the 76ers logo is not offensive. The Union logo is not offensive. The flag was first used in the late 1700s and represented the original 13 colonies that broke away from England to form the United States of America.

If Colin Kaepernick is going to sit here and say it’s offensive because of “its connection to an era of slavery” then we’re really going down a super slippery slope. Our currency features the likeness of slave owners. Is currency offensive? Ben Franklin once owned slaves before freeing them. Is Ben Franklin offensive? Should the Ben Franklin Institute be renamed? Furthermore, the city of Philadelphia was once the home of slave owners. Is the city of Philadelphia offensive? Independence Hall? The National Constitution Center? The Franklin Fountain ice cream shop?

It sounds stupid, but this is the same logic that got these shoes pulled in the first place, because they are being linked to “an era of slavery.” However, there is no attention being paid to what individual symbols actually mean, because people are blindly associating things that existed in the same epoch. They say, “well symbol X reminds me of injustice Y, simply because they existed at the same time.”

That’s just not a logical way to see the world, and at some point, we have to take a step back and say, ‘okay, this is not productive.’ Putting too much time and effort into revisionist history results in diminishing returns.

And sure, our nation does have a checkered past. A number of the founding fathers owned slaves. They stole land from Native Americans. We had Jim Crow laws, segregation, a long list of shameful stuff. There’s no ignoring that, and it’s something everyone should always be aware of.

But our ancestors also created the world’s foremost democracy, a country that made numerous technological, medical, and engineering breakthroughs over the years. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers fought in World Wars I and II and we found a way to put a dude on a moon.

You take the good with the bad, mix it all together, and that’s American history. The best thing we can do is to learn from past mistakes, keep moving forward as a society, and try to get things right. Sitting here and complaining about a 1700s-era flag because it’s “offensive” doesn’t help us do that, nor does it help us focus on the myriad issues that really matter in 2019, like the immigration problem, the opioid crisis, the economy, foreign policy, and blah blah blah.

I don’t see how this complaint over a pair of shoes helps Kaepernick’s message, a message that was originally about social injustice and systemic racism in contemporary America. Keyword contemporary, not 1792 or whenever this flag was first flown. It feels like Kap is doing himself a disservice here, a distraction from what he originally set out to do.

Just my opinion, man.