Once the semester started I lost all hope of reading books outside of my studies, but I still manage to get in a few good essays/pieces of literary journalism every week. One I’d like to recommend is this profile on Colin Kaepernick and his activism, written by Rembert Browne for Bleacher Report.
Rembert Browne is an amazing writer—I’ve been a fan of him for a couple years now after one fated evening-into-night session of reading everything he ever wrote for Grantland.
Nearly every paragraph of this profile packs a punch, but here’s a taste:
“When you are a minority and refute the notion that you were charitably allowed into a club—that you were being done a favor, not that you earned it—you will be punished, until it has been determined that you have learned your lesson. This has long been sport for white America, long before football. Slavery was for sport. Laws laced in hatred and hypocrisy were for sport. The invisible ceilings and roadblocks and hurdles—sport. The real tradition of this country is a testing of the limits of people of color, to see how far we can be pushed until we either give up (and give in) or fight back (and die).
The remaining option—to persist—is the one that has always been inconvenient for white America. Colin Kaepernick is inconvenient. To persist is to show strength, but also to be unpredictable, hard to define, impossible to control. And to grow stronger with every lash is to become dangerous—a threat not only to power, but to inspire others to follow suit. Leaders of color in this country have long been mythologized by white America when they teach their own to thrive within the confines of current rules, not when they demand that every rule be called into question.”