Colin Kaepernick

Before & After with Lester Holt

In this episode of Before & After with Lester Holt, former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick reflects on his decision to take a knee during the

Key takeaways

• Kaepernick's protest was not a spontaneous act but the culmination of years of lived experience with racial injustice and identity struggles.
• Growing up Black in a predominantly white community and family created ongoing tension between cultural identity and familial acceptance.

Main topics

• Colin Kaepernick's decision to kneel during the national anthem
• Racial identity and upbringing as an adopted Black child

Notable quotes

"It's not a singular moment. It wasn't you just woke up one day and said, I'm going to do this."

Conclusion

Colin Kaepernick's story is one of deep personal reflection and enduring commitment to

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Some crimes are so shocking, they don't just make headlines. They forever change our society. I'm Katie Ring, host of America's Most Infamous Crimes. Each week, I take on one of the most notorious criminal cases. Each case unfolds across multiple episodes, released every Tuesday through Thursday, from the first sign that something was wrong to the moment the truth came out or didn't. Listen to and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:30) This week on Meet the Press, as President Trump asks voters to make the election about him and promises to pay them, I'll talk with Speaker Mike Johnson and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, plus AI whistleblower Jacob Coxon. This week on Meet the Press, listen to the full episode now wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (0:52) Everybody feels like they know the story. Oh yeah, that was a guy that took the knee and it was a controversy and he couldn't get a job. End of story. Speaker 4 (0:58) It's interesting because people just look at individual moments and oftentimes I don't think they look at the totality of it. Speaker 6 (1:07) There are moments that divide a life into before and after. For Colin Kaepernick, that moment came on a football field. A star player at the University of Nevada, he was twice named Offensive Player of the Year. In 2011, Kaepernick was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers, and he soon landed an endorsement deal with Nike. He led his team to the Super Bowl in 2013, then back. to the NFC Championship the following season. But on September 1, 2016, during a preseason game against the San Diego Chargers, Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem. His protest against racial injustice and police violence instantly turned Kaepernick into one of the most polarizing figures in American sports history. To some, a symbol of justice and courage. To others, anger and division. Now... Colin Kaepernick has written a book called The Perilous Fight about how his decision pushed him off the field and from the game he loved. For the first time in a decade, he is talking in detail about what led to that pivotal moment about his before and after. Here is my conversation with Colin Kaepernick. Speaker 6 (2:31) It's been 10 years since you famously took that knee. We haven't heard much from you over the last 10 years. Speaker 4 (2:38) Why is that? I try to be very intentional of when I'm speaking and why I'm speaking. And I've heard a lot of the feedback of, you're not talking enough. I'll say on the flip side of that, early in 2016, coming out of the back of the protest, it was like, well, why are you talking so much? I also wanted to make sure that... I was creating space for other people and other leaders to be able to step into some of these areas. So it's not a singular voice trying to drive a conversation. Speaker 6 (3:12) What's the one thing that you think people get wrong when they try to understand your story? Speaker 4 (3:18) Thinking that this was just a moment in time. It is years and years of lived experience, years of educating myself. Speaker 6 (3:29) Can we talk a little bit about your identity? And by that, I mean, you're very clear about this in the book that there was a struggle in your life about your blackness. And I hate saying that, but it's been used against me as well. So I think it's something we maybe many of us have encountered. Speaker 4 (3:46) Yeah. Being adopted into a white family. You very quickly know and realize I'm different and I'm black. Speaker 6 (3:56) Did your own family, your mother, your father, did they struggle with dealing with your blackness and how comfortable they would be with you expressing yourself? Speaker 4 (4:05) I would say I think they did. It doesn't come from a malicious space. I know my parents love me. My parents also are both from Wisconsin, moved to California, and they adopted a little black boy. And when it comes to black culture, like they did not have the exposure there. And there were things that they did, I think were amazing. I had a little, my buddy doll, that was a little black boy. And one of the early defining moments of this is a project of coloring my family and drawing my family and coloring the rest of my family yellow, colored myself brown. I knew from the time I was five years and younger that I was black and my family was white. So I had pieces like that growing up. I was like, they let me know I was adopted early on. That wasn't a question. They let me know where they thought my lineage originally was from, just based upon what they could gather at that point in time. So those things all existed. Speaker 6 (5:10) There was an experience you had when you were eight that you detail in the book about. Some of the neighborhood kids. Can you share that? Speaker 4 (5:18) Yeah. So to give some context, think about Turlock, California, the 90s. Predominantly white community, very agricultural, spent most of my days outside playing, running around the neighborhood. I had a brother who was 10 years older than me. So I was always chasing after sports and things that he was doing. So we were outside playing in the street. It starts to get dark. The streetlights are getting closer to come on. And it's like, oh, I better get home. So streets start scattering. I'm coming around the block. And I see a few of the kids that we had just been playing with. I went to go see, like, hey, what are y'all doing? Can we keep playing? And during that, the kids grabbed me. They tied me to a rose tree. And I just remember the moment of, like. Them laughing like they were having a good time Them calling me nigger is part of that and the only thing that stopped them was a neighbor who was driving by and Said hey, what are y'all doing and the kids stopped in scatter? The neighbor didn't even get out of his car or stop just kind of rolled by and kept going was able to get get myself free Speaker 4 (6:43) And I remember just running home as fast as I could. And I also remember the moment of stopping at my doorstep before walking in the house and having to gather myself and say, I can't tell my parents. So I ran upstairs, showered, got myself together, came down for dinner, and acted like it didn't happen. Because I... I didn't have confidence in what the response would be in me telling them that and the implications of it. Speaker 6 (7:22) Did you even understand the implications of it? Speaker 4 (7:25) I don't think I understood at eight years old. I don't think I understood it explicitly. For me, what that moment really solidified was the awareness that I have to have in being in spaces like this. Speaker 4 (7:40) is different than what it looks like for other people. And from that point forward, that awareness is always there. Growing up black in a white family, in a predominantly white community, and constantly having to have these battles. But you learn to be able to make sure that you're navigating those situations in a way that keeps you safe and a way that you're able to move forward. Speaker 6 (8:03) You remind me of a story in my own life. My wife is white. Speaker 6 (8:08) We were at a dinner party one night and she was like nine months pregnant. And someone asked very innocently, like, so are you going to raise him white or black? It's like, what are you talking Speaker 4 (8:18) about? Yeah. Now the part that becomes more difficult is as you're growing is not only am I black as far as skin tone and genetics, but culture comes with that. Speaker 4 (8:34) parts of culture that you identify and resonate with that, those come into question constantly. And that may be music, that may be clothing, that may be the people you look up to. In the book, I talk about the influence of Allen Iverson, Randy Moss, and these being people that... to me were the epitome of blackness because they were unapologetic about it. And when people questioned them and pushed them on it, it's like, no, this is who I am. You have to accept me as who I am. And to me, you get to make that decision of, are you going to be true to who you are? Speaker 4 (9:14) and how you view yourself and what that trajectory is, or ultimately, do you assimilate? And we see that show up in relation to how I want my hair, the music I'm listening to, the friends I have. All of those things become part of this. Speaker 4 (9:32) For me, there becomes a realization of, yes, we're family. We love each other. There's also differences within us. And we have to be okay with those differences. And that may mean we do things differently. We like different things. We're a support different things. But being able to carry that forward and to me going back to that identity piece, being comfortable and confident in that, saying, yes, I love you, but I disagree with you on these things. Speaker 4 (10:08) I think that is part, as I went through my journey, I had to become more and more comfortable with. And that's in my relation to my family, but it also comes into relation to society. This wasn't a Speaker 6 (10:20) singular moment. It wasn't you just woke up one day and said, I'm going to take a knee. There Speaker 4 (10:25) were a lot of areas growing up that I wasn't exposed to that I had to learn as I got older and inform myself around that ultimately led to the moment of taking a knee. One of the turning points there was reading the autobiography of Malcolm X, reading Frantz Fanon and Wretched of the Earth, Black Skin, White Mask, Huey Newton's Revolutionary Suicide, reading Angela Davis and going down this lineage of Black scholars and Black revolutionaries that had a different vision for what the country could be and what