The release of Colin Kaepernick’s autobiography, The Perilous Fight, provides an opportunity to revisit his protest of the national anthem 10 years ago. In choosing to sit and then kneel during the national anthem, Colin Kaepernick chose to make a stand for Black people as an oppressed people in the United States, bringing attention to the unlawful murders of Black people by law enforcement.
In the lead-up to his protest, Mr. Kaepernick and the world saw the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Walter Scott, and Eric Garner, to name a few. 10 years later, we can see the fallout.
The country had an opportunity to heed Mr. Kaepernick’s words and actually act on them. 2020 seemed like a time when (white) America was finally ready to put its money where its mouth was. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, public institutions and corporations made pledges, with financial support, to change their policies and procedures in the name of racial equity and racial justice. But those pledges of institutional change and financial donations were rolled back with Donald Trump’s re-election.
The handwriting was on the wall.
In 2017, Donald Trump said that Mr. Kaepernick and other football players who kneeled during the national anthem should be fired from their jobs, and on top of that, called them “sons of bitches.” That foreshadowed the fallout we’ve seen and experienced. Truth be told, the fight for Black rights has always had a timetable. The Civil Rights Movement serves as an example that, at the point when white people felt that Black people had achieved enough “rights,” they were no longer interested in continuing the fight for justice for all.
Likewise, white people eventually became disinterested in fighting for Black lives the further away George Floyd’s death became. So much so that Donald Trump re-emerged as the leader of the free world and the racist-in-chief. Black lives have been under heavy assault ever since.
Masses of Black workers have been purged from the federal government; teaching Black history truthfully, as well as American history, has come under fire in schools and universities, to the tune of losing funding if done; DEI initiatives have been stopped nationwide by way of executive orders; the Voting Rights Act is gutted thanks to a conservative Supreme Court. The fallout is clear; Black lives don’t matter.
Thus, the struggle for Black lives continues. The struggle continues on many fronts. One battleground being the public school.
Each year, students arrive at school hoping to learn so their lives can be transformed. Sadly, many students end every school year exhausted from stress due to oppressive policies and discouraged due to the lack of transformative power in their studies. The struggle for Black lives is the struggle to empower and prepare the Black student.
Their realities in schools shouldn’t elicit hopelessness. This struggle should sober us enough to recognize that it is not for the weary, that lives are truly at stake, and that it requires our endurance. However, it should encourage us that our skills, talents, and passions can make a difference.
Colin Kaepernick chose to stand for Black people. But he didn’t want to be the face of a movement for Black lives. Many of us educators desire to stand for Black people, much like Mr. Kaepernick. That’s why we get in the work. But like Mr. Kaepernick, we don’t want the spotlight that may come with the work, specifically the backlash and the ridicule. We just want to do the work for Black people, and that’s admirable.
But there’s a lesson for us in the wake of this 10-year remembrance of Colin Kaepernick’s protest. It is not simply to stand for Black people; we do that. The lesson is that we have to stand fearlessly, expect backlash and ridicule, and still stand on business. To be clear, Colin Kaepernick is one of the most courageous people that we have seen this century. By no means am I saying that he’s not courageous. But being the face of a movement often comes with stress and anxiety we may not have prepared for in our desire to do what’s right.
The result has been exile for some, death for many, and persecution for all.
Educators who stand for Black children have similar concerns, and rightfully so. Being under the microscope of parents, the school board, the community at large, and peers, superiors, and students can make for a stressful work environment and professional career. We’ve seen Black educators be harassed by white parents, resign due to a lack of support, and be relieved of their duties just because they chose to stand for Black people.
We must understand that if our work is rooted in supporting Black people, the applause and appreciation will be less than if we shouted: “all lives matter.” The only applause and appreciation we will receive will come from Black folks. Because naming the injustice in history to call for true reconciliation by way of policies that re-organize and re-distribute the social, economic, and political institutions of our society is going to rub people the wrong way, mainly those who have benefited from the harms done to Black people.
Naming racial injustice demands that we change the way Black children are educated because the way Black children are educated largely benefits everyone else first, and Black children and families maybe.
The lesson from Colin Kaepernick’s protest is that the enemies of justice will attack and the vultures will fly overhead, expecting us to fall under the pressure and stress of standing up. But we must be prepared to handle what comes with our work in addition to being prepared for the work itself. This school year, educators standing up for Black people must get their minds, their bodies, and their spirits prepared for backlash, for persecution, and for abandonment. Not because it’s guaranteed to happen, but because those things are on the table.
But when we prepare, we are ready when it comes, and we have a plan to counter it. Let’s be sure that this year we’re not only prepared to do the work, but also prepared and ready to fight back against those who will try to shut us up, shut us down, and erase our voices. Because Black lives literally depend on us fighting back and standing tall.
Black lives depend on us.
