Over the past few years, the Black Lives Matter movement has gained significant traction as individuals across the globe are taking a stand against racial injustice. Police brutality and other injustices have impacted the African-American community at an alarmingly disproportionate rate for decades now with little to no change, up until recently. More and more individuals from all walks of life are now joining the fight against these injustices as members of the Black Lives Matter movement, or BLM for short, holding protests and rallies across the country to take a stand once and for all. While this movement has implications for a substantial proportion of the United States, one man in particular has been deeply entrenched in it since the very beginning and is arguably its greatest proponent: former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Now a new project is set to explore his formative years and how he ultimately came to take a stand when he had the opportunity, with the trailer for Colin in Black and White being officially unveiled by Netflix this week.
In 2016, Kaepernick made waves throughout the NFL along with the rest of the country when he opted to kneel during the national anthem prior to a game when he was quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers. This was a byproduct of personal feelings he had regarding racial injustices in the United States as African-Americans have been disproportionately impacted by things like police brutality in recent decades, leaving him feeling that standing for the national anthem while this is taking place would be counterproductive. How he, or any individual, comes to such a decision is integral to understanding the problems at hand, and now we will be getting an answer to that with the new Netflix series Colin in Black and White. Netflix unveiled the official trailer for the new series this week, and in it viewers are introduced to Jaden Michael who has been cast to play a teenage Kaepernick with Kaepernick himself narrating the trailer and providing them with the first look into what life was like for him growing up. It certainly doesn’t appear he had it all that easy, and it should certainly make for an interesting watch when it premieres on Netflix on October 29th.
While not everybody had a positive reaction to his decision to kneel in 2016, Kaepernick has firmly established himself as one of the Black Lives Matter movement’s greatest figureheads as a result. Even after losing his job as an NFL quarterback making millions of dollars per year, he has continued to fight against racial injustice with his head held high as he pursues change. Though that change hasn’t come as quickly as he or anybody else would like, it has to start somewhere and Kaepernick deserves probably the most credit in helping start it off. How he came to that decision is now going to be explored in depth in Colin in Black and White, set to debut in a few short weeks.
