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![]() ![]() This is about a mixed-race teenager from Wisconsin who was adopted by a white family as an infant and transplanted to Turlock, Calif., at 4 and how he came to terms with straddling worlds of white and Black. It’s not about the fallout that has led to five years and counting of him not getting an offer from an NFL team. We need artistic works that emphasize widespread participation in these protests, or the actual history will fall prey to celebrity culture, passivity will rule the day and people will wait for the next “great person” (usually “great man,” in history’s telling) to come down from Planet Hero and save the day.This isn’t about the 2016 NFL preseason when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick set off a firestorm with his silent protest during the national anthem. The push for a racial reckoning has been a collective, grassroots movement that also included the professional athletic fields of the United States. I hope those young people’s stories merit equal treatment in a forthcoming biographical series because it is important that we not see the last five years as being encapsulated by one individual. In their stories, you can also see the harbinger of the backlash and violence that has become a hallmark of the post-Donald Trump era as white supremacist organizations grow and go to war over what they often misrepresent as critical race theory. In their stories, you can see the blueprint of a movement that led to the summer of 2020 when the police murder of George Floyd resulted in the largest protests in this country’s history. This latter subject is of particular interest to me, as the book I just wrote, "The Kaepernick Effect," is less about Kaepernick than the countless young people he inspired. ![]() I’d like to see DuVernay and Kaepernick then give dramatic treatment to the courage displayed by the hundreds upon hundreds of younger athletes who, inspired by his actions, took a knee during the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” in protest of police violence and racial inequity. I’d like to see her depicting Kaepernick somehow playing some of the best football of his life despite the scrutiny, the boos and the death threats. I’d like to see her depiction of Kaepernick demonstrating without flinching for four straight months during the 2016 NFL season. I would like to see a work about the entirety of the social justice movement of the last five years in DuVernay’s capable hands. It remains to be seen if there’s an audience for this kind of intensive bio, but my hope is that this is just the beginning. In this series, we should look to see how DuVernay and Kaepernick accomplish that, especially since this work will remain focused on Kaepernick’s upbringing and - unlike the above-mentioned films - won’t focus on his political awareness as an adult. In those films, we get to see the subjects’ childhoods through the prism of the injustices that surrounded them. We’ve had great examples of sports biopics that focus on athletes who played a role in their era’s freedom struggles, including “ 42” about pioneering baseball player Jackie Robinson and “Ali” about three-time heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali.
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