Former National Football League quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick released his documentary, “Colin in Black & White,” on Netflix. The six-part series, directed by Ava DuVernay, focuses on Kaepernick’s high school life, encompassing his journey as an aspiring QB, rejection of baseball, and other typical high school drama all through the lens of a black child adopted by white parents.
The documentary is not solely fixated on his teenage life, however, as the adult Kaepernick makes an appearance in every episode. He is shown either also watching the “show” about his own story, narrating his past self’s thoughts, or relating the issue addressed in the episode to a broader one today.
The first installment, for example, shows Kaepernick’s somewhat comical cornrow situation. Inspired by former National Basketball Association star Allen Iverson, the then eighth grader seeks out an amateur stylist to braid his hair, which ends up being too tight. Kaepernick takes that experience to talk about the NBA’s stringent 2005 dress code rules, the evolution of rap music, and what the term “thug” really means.
Perhaps the most interesting dynamic in the series is the obliviousness of Kaepernick’s white parents. Besides being a boy going through high school and puberty, Kaepernick seemed to cry or get emotional in every episode, and nearly every time, his emotions could have been soothed if his parents understood his situation.
Going back the first episode, the viewer learns how woefully unprepared the Kaepernick’s were in terms of raising a black child. After getting his cornrows done by a professional, Kaepernick goes to baseball practice, where his white coaches notice the new hair style and send a message back home, notifying his parents that his hair is “breaking the rules,” and that he needs to change it.
His parents, however, instead of supporting their son, present him with an ultimatum: quit baseball, or get rid of the cornrows. The scene then cuts to a dejected Kaepernick getting his hair cut by a white woman in a SuperCuts.
Kaepernick’s mother gets slightly more attention than his father because of her unconscious biases. She is visibly upset when her son refuses to add any seasoning to his plate of soul food, yet it had already been established that he poured heaps of salt and pepper onto his mother’s cooking.
She also tries to hide Kaepernick’s Homecoming photos, as he went with a Black girl named Crystal. She even says to her husband that she hopes the relationship with Crystal is “just a phase.” However, she hangs up the Winter Formal pictures with the other family photos, where certain circumstances forced him to take a white girl to the dance.
The series also goes in depth on Kaepernick’s road to becoming a college quarterback. Despite his success in the NFL, the University of Nevada was the only school to give him an offer. In fact, it took a basketball game, in which Kaepernick had a Jordan-esque flu game, for the Nevada scouts to understand his true athleticism.
Contrary to his lack of success in football recruitment, Kaepernick had every school begging for him on the baseball field. There was even a montage in the show which showed schools like Stanford, USC, Wisconsin, and Harvard pitch their school’s programs.
However, because he only wanted to be a quarterback, Kaepernick turned down all of his baseball offers, leading to more discrimination from his classmates, their parents, and his coaches.
The decision to stick to what he loved turned out to be a shrewd one. Kaepernick was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers in the 2011 NFL Draft. In just his second season, he led the 49ers to a Super Bowl appearance, and then appeared in the conference championship game the following year.
Kaepernick was thrusted into the national spotlight in 2016 when he began to kneel during the national anthem before games to protest police brutality. Since that season, Kaepernick has remained a free agent, though he has stated that he is still prepared for a comeback to the NFL if a team reached out.