A documentary examines race in football via Colin Kaepernick’s career.
In the past, when people talked about football heroes, both collegiate and professional, they meant white men. When the game became more integrated, after World War II, a racist myth among some fans held that Black players were good for muscle, while strategic thinking was the domain of white quarterbacks and coaches.
The rise of the Black quarterback has proved, among other things, revelatory. In the documentary “Kaepernick & America,” the directors Ross Hockrow and Tommy Walker spend a good amount of time showing how excited football fans were when Colin Kaepernick, the biracial quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, was winning games and acting cheerful.
Of course, even then there were the irascible white sports commentators like Colin Cowherd, who suggested that Kaepernick’s voluminous tattoos were a little too “street,” and that his post-touchdown bicep kiss was a sign that he wasn’t a “grown-up.” One wonders whether Cowherd ever objected to the white N.F.L. player Mark Gastineau’s sack dances.
The movie really turns over a rock once Kaepernick chooses the gesture of taking a knee during the national anthem at games, as a protest against racial injustice and police brutality. The worms revealed include David Portnoy, the founder of the media company Barstool Sports, calling Kaepernick “an ISIS guy” and the entirely, even blindingly white cheerleader for the extreme right, Tomi Lahren, screeching to Kaepernick, “Aren’t you half white?” Even the clips from mainstream sources reveal a media high on its own supply of frenzied delusional nationalism. Eventually Kaepernick’s conscience gets him blackballed, and he remains without a team today.
The verbal analysis here isn’t always profound — one interviewee trots out the banal phrase “the conversation we should be having” — but the narrative as presented in archival footage (Kaepernick did not sit for an interview for this film) is exemplary. The sports journalist Steve Wyche sums things bluntly: “We haven’t made much progress in this country.”
Kaepernick & America
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. Rent or buy on Apple TV, Google Play and other streaming platforms and pay TV operators.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
