Tribeca Film Fest 2022: Kaepernick and America: Do You Understand Why Yet?

It is 2022 and we are still fighting to root out white supremacy. Ignorance and misinformation still thrives today. An inordinate amount of black people in America are dying on a daily basis from crooked police and no one is doing anything about it. Everywhere white supremacy is gagging to stay relevant in a world that is aching to progress. The French even voted in an extreme right party in their recent elections.

Directed by Tommy Walker and Ross Hockrow, Kaepernick and America is yet another call to action in the fight to root out racism in America and save black lives.

Black Lives Matter

The film starts off with a review of Kaepernick’s rise to football stardom. Adopted into a well to do white family as a baby, he had a love for football from a very young age. The film shows us a picture of a paper Kaep wrote out in fourth grade, stating that he would play for the San Francisco 49ers. Fast forward fourteen years and that is exactly where he landed.

He started out as the backup quarterback, but after standing out in the first game he played, he found himself leading the team and thrust into the spotlight. Everyone wanted a piece of the hot new star who was making waves.

Who could predict the powder keg he would set off with one simple gesture of solidarity?

#BlackLivesMatter

Source: Triple Threat Television

Along with his rise, was the consistent appearance of new police videos surfacing. Starting with seemingly normal traffic stops, they ended up in tragedy for black drivers. From Philando Castille to George Floyd, the news was inundated with the unnecessary, brutal violence from police officers on African Americans.

Kaep was following the violence and began speaking out about it in interviews. One game, a reporter noticed that he didn’t stand for the National Anthem. After further investigation, Kaep stated that he was refusing to stand for a country that flippantly kills black and brown people with no consequences to the police people responsible for them.

Protests began breaking out all over the nation and an even greater movement, #BlackLivesMatter, was born.

It Cannot Be Said Enough, Black Lives Matter

Nate Boyer, a former Green Beret and football player, wrote an open letter to Kaep regarding his refusal to stand for the National Anthem. In it he expressed his feelings of pride for his service and the pain he felt regarding Kaep’s refusal. Kaep reached out to him explaining that he was trying to do it in a respectful manner and asked him for his input on what he thought might be a better gesture.

Source: Nike

Boyer told him that a gesture of respect in sports was usually to take a knee and that he thought that would be more considerate for Kaep to do at the next game, honoring America’s military. Kaep and a couple of other players, agreed to his suggestion and kneeled at the National Anthem.

The move set off a domino effect of white fragility everywhere. Claiming that Kaep had dishonored the military and the flag, whiny white people began setting his jersey on fire, booing him at games and hounding him on social media and everywhere he went.

Ultimately, it led to the destruction of his career, as wealthy, white team owners refused to pick him up to play after this, but, it also propelled him forward as a face of the civil rights movement; an activist who refused to give in to white supremacy.

In All Honesty…

WAKE UP AMERICA! I would love to see the day where these types of documentaries were a thing of the past.

But nonetheless we continue to need them because people are STILL NOT LISTENING. Americans like to do a lot of talking about “freedom” and “the flag” etc., but what they aren’t recognizing is that American “freedom” has never existed for anyone but white men since the beginning of this country’s existence.

Kaepernick and America brings into focus one man’s struggle with the systemic racism that has haunted America since its beginning. White supremacy was woven into every facet of our government and, any and all systems allowed to stand by the white One Percent. It continues to persist today.

As I write this, conservative Republicans are spreading false information to their followers every day causing a schism in this country not seen since the Civil War. White Supremacy is clinging to scarcity, hypocrisy, fear and deceit to remain relevant, and its followers are eating it up. The more rights they strip and the more fictitious fears they spread, the more their base loves them.

Colin Kaepernick’s symbolic kneel was not out of “disrespect” to anything. He knelt, in opposition to a country that turns a blind eye on the unjustifiable deaths of minorities, justly using his Constitutional rights. There’s nothing more American than that.

Source: Justin Pearcy @jpearcy68

Yet the consequences of him not kissing the ring of the oppressor was for him to lose his NFL career. The film exemplifies another example of what happens when any American of color says “No” to the white establishment.

One part I found rather paradoxical is when Boyer passionately mentions the Green Beret’s motto “De Opresso Liber” (“To Free the Oppressed”) as the reason why he joined. Yet, how many of our own oppressed citizens are actually free? The American Armed Forces still has much to do free American black and brown populations from the castigation and outright murder our government and white supremacy inflicts. Not to mention its own systemic racism, and the assault and silencing of women and LGBTQ+ troops in service over the years. Where is that motto in those situations?

The success and wealth of this country has everything to do with our minority populations. They may not have colonized it, but there would certainly be no America without the millions of black, brown and Asian bodies who suffered and died, being forced to build it. It truly is the great white lie; the absurdity of white history that is perpetuated over and over to our kids in school, in a vain effort to indoctrinate more into white patriotism.

Kaepernick and America is one of many documentaries done over the years in the attempt to wake America up to the blinders that have plagued us for centuries. Let us hope that filmmakers won’t have to continue to make many more of them before we FINALLY decide on real, progressive, inclusive change.

Until then, keep educating yourself. Real change truly does start with you.