REVIEW: “Colin Kaepernick: Change the Game” by Colin Kaepernick
Teenagers are obnoxious brats that their parents send through hell. Most of us eventually grow up and realize that there is no such thing as a massive conspiracy to ruin our lives with petty injustices. Others grow up but never change because behaving like an obnoxious brat beset by petty injustices can be a lucrative and emotionally satisfying career path.
Colin Kaepernick falls into one of those categories. The former NFL quarterback, best known for kneeling in protest during the national anthem (after losing his job as a starter), has become a celebrated activist, brand ambassador and media tycoon since declaring himself a victim of racism has. (Fact check: He wasn’t good enough and no sane NFL coach would welcome such a glaring distraction in the locker room.)
Like most liberal activists and professional complainers, Kaepernick’s career really took off after Donald Trump was elected president. He signed a multimillion-dollar endorsement deal with Nike — the iconic sportswear brand that capitalizes on Chinese slave labor — and produced an autobiographical Netflix series. Colin in black and white, who compared the NFL Draft to slavery. He also published a children’s book, I color myself differentlyon how a brown crayon transformed his life by teaching him to celebrate his “Black identity through the power of radical self-love.”
Kaepernick’s latest offer, Colin Kaepernick: Change the game, is a graphic novel memoir about his struggles to “find” himself as a gifted high school athlete cursed with a plethora of scholarship offers in a sport (baseball) he thought was too “white.” He is also forced to confront the “racism” of his white adoptive parents, who are portrayed as villains in the story. For example, they didn’t encourage their son’s decision to buy cornrows because they feared it would make him look “unprofessional” or “like a little thug.”
It’s one of many examples of Kaepernick insisting on portraying himself as a victim. A run-of-the-mill conflict between a rebellious teenager and his dopey parents is portrayed as a systemic injustice. “I think it was important to show that this can happen in your home and how you’re moving forward together while addressing the ongoing racism,” he said in an interview with CBS last week. “I know my parents loved me, but there were still very troublesome things I went through.”
Probably not as problematic as the things he would have gone through if Rick and Teresa Kaepernick hadn’t adopted him as an infant after his 19-year-old mother gave him away. His father (identity unknown) escaped before he was born. But because the dominant cultural discourse in this country is one that primarily fosters identity-based grievances, Kaepernick is forced to infuse his relatively privileged upbringing with the alert sensibilities of the present. It’s all fear without a hint of reflection on how lucky he was to be raised by loving parents.
“My dad was the one who drove me to workouts and camps, so we spent hours and hours in the car together,” writes Kaepernick. That was annoying, he says, because his father always wanted to talk or listen to country music. A few pages later, he complains about being “bombed” by pundits who spoke about absent black fathers. He was also upset when his adoptive father tried to have awkward conversations about girls.
One of Kaepernick’s public critics, the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, denounced his 2016 protest of the national anthem as “stupid,” “arrogant,” and “disrespectful.” She also said kneeling during the anthem was a sign of “contempt for a government that made it possible for their parents and grandparents to have a decent life that they probably couldn’t have lived in the places they came from.” “. That part was revealed more than a year after her death in 2021 because so-called journalist Katie Couric wanted to “protect” the judiciary’s reputation as a “crusader for equality.”
A few months after Ginsburg attacked her son, Kaepernick’s racist parents issued a statement offering their full support. “Colin carries a heavy burden and follows a difficult path that he truly believes in,” they wrote. “We want people to know that we are very proud of our son and admire his strength and courage to stand up for the rights of others.” They also defended him from scolds who criticized his tattoos.
What monsters.
“Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” That’s the slogan for one of Kaepernick’s lucrative Nike advertising campaigns. He clearly believes he is a victim of racial injustice. He might even think he’s sacrificed everything when we talk to “everything” about several more years in the NFL as an unheralded backup quarterback.
At the very least, Kaepernick must feel guilty that he’d score relatively high according to the various silly metrics by which “privilege” is determined. He didn’t have to overcome hardships like extreme poverty, domestic dysfunction, physical disability, Islamophobia, fat phobia and so on. But his parents were a bit clumsy, and he overcame their microaggressions while avoiding a career in professional baseball rather than football. You can read all about it in this picture book that he sells for money.
Poor child.
Colin Kaepernick: Change the game
by Colin Kaepernick
Graphix, 144 pages, $14.99
Source : freebeacon.com