I fail to understand the outrage by many other writers. He's writing a column that reflects his opinion, and which for that matter reflects the opinion of a lot of people, albeit mostly older, white, close-minded people. Personally I think tattoos are stupid, and I think people who cover themselves in tattoos are immature and dumb (unless they're Henry Rollins).
I see a lot of people registering their disgust with Whitley's article bc they want to seem hip or open-minded, which is fine. But Whitley is not exactly putting forth a lone wolf opinion. That being said, he should have chopped off the first three grafs:
"San Francisco's Colin Kaepernick is going to be a big-time NFL quarterback. That must make the guys in San Quentin happy.
Approximately 98.7 percent of the inmates at California's state prison have tattoos. I don't know that as fact, but I've watched enough "Lockup" to know it's close to accurate.
I'm also pretty sure less than 1.3 percent of NFL quarterbacks have tattoos. There's a reason for that."
And started with this: "NFL quarterback is the ultimate position of influence and responsibility. He is the CEO of a high-profile organization, and you don't want your CEO to look like he just got paroled."
He would have still sounded like an out of touch white guy, but a little less racist.
