Fox News: ADL Says Betsy Ross Flag 'Essentially Innocuous'

The Anti-Defamation League on Tuesday weighed into the Betsy Ross flag debate after Colin Kaepernick reportedly raised concerns to Nike officials about putting the flag on a sneaker.

Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who created a firestorm in 2016 when he decided to kneel during the national anthem to raise awareness about perceived racial injustices, told Nike that flag recalled an era in which black people were enslaved and that the particular flag had been appropriated by white nationalist groups, according to multiple reports.

The Anti-Defamation League does not have the particular flag in its database of hate symbols, Mark Pitcavage [pictured above], a senior research fellow for the group’s Center on Extremism, told the Associated Press. He said extremist groups have occasionally used the flag, but it’s most commonly used by people for patriotic purposes.

“We view it as essentially an innocuous historical flag,” he said. “It's not a thing in the white supremacist movement.”