I've been reading Colin Kaepernick's memoir, The Perilous Fight. For those who have spent the last ten years living under rocks, he is the former, brilliant NFL quarterback who was pushed out of the league and subsequently blackballed because he kneeled rather than stood up during the national anthem at the start of a game in 2016. He was protesting police violence against Blacks in the U.S. Some pages into the book, I became increasingly aware of faint echoes, gradually growing stronger, until a certain resemblance became undeniable as I read the closing paragraphs:
I feel acutely the need to put the well-being of others before my own. That's certainly the case when it comes to my family and those I care about, especially my wife and my daughter. Every once in a while, you realize you'll tear some shit up if you have to, to protect those you love. That happened to me on Sunday, August 14, 2016, at NRG Stadium in Houston as I heard the opening notes of the national anthem. I was so wrought by the violence being delivered to Black people that a strong feeling overcame me. I just couldn't stand anymore and pretend it wasn't happening. So I sat down. Then I kneeled.
That feeling overcame me again when they pulled my daughter out of my wife's belly. I pledged in that instant to do everything in my power to love and protect them.
Being Black in America is a perilous fight. I can't afford to back down. None of us can. Not if we're going to turn this thing around. The world needs each of us to be willing to stand up, or sit down, or kneel, to bring about the change we long for.
The echos are of another memoir I recently read, Alexei Navalny's searing Patriot, describing his opposition to and evental martyrdom by our president's buddy Vladimir Putin. The two books can stand next to each other on my bookshelf, that of the gifted athlete for whom telling the truth about the mistreatment of his people by so-called "law enforcement" was more important than his beloved career, and that of the dissident politician for whom refusing to accept the oppression of his people by a ruthless authoritarian was more important than his life.
Right now, we in America have a rare oportunity and privilege. We don't have to give up our livelihoods or risk our lives in order to promote the change we long for. All the world needs for us to do, is vote. If we don't stand up in that manner in the next month, the examples of Kaepernick and Navalny, already frighteningly evocative, may well become far more personally relevant.
