Source: Joshua Kissi / Courtesy of Ebony
Colin Kaepernick—the athlete and activist who put his convictions before his career and flooded the world with a Pacific Ocean’s worth of white tears just by starting the practice of kneeling during the national anthem as a show of support for Black lives—will be gracing November’s cover of Ebony in an issue that features an exclusive interview with The View’s Sunny Hostin and two members of the Lower Eastside Girls Club.
The aforementioned four discussed Kaepernick’s “journey over the last four years, his continued fight for change, his adoption by a white family and how that shaped him, and the possibility of him returning to the NFL,” per a release.
The former 49ers QB also talked about his nonprofit Know Your Rights Camp, his upcoming Netflix series Colin in Black & White and his new book Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future Without Policing & Prisons.
“The biggest lesson I want to share is you don’t have to accept the status quo; you don’t have to accept what is currently happening,” Kaepernick told Hostin. “You have the power and ability to have an impact and create the change and bring about the future that you want. I think we can do that personally, I think we can do that collectively, and I think in doing so all of those actions add up to the ability to change larger systems.”
This is Kaepernick’s first interview in a good while, and just the fact that he’s still even talking about a possible return to the NFL “regardless of the actions of 32 teams and their partners to deny me employment”—as he said in the interview—is enough to have readers intrigued.
Kaepernick will certainly go down in history with the likes of Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos, and current greats like LeBron James, as an athlete who knows he’s Black first and is unwilling to “stick to sports,” “shut up and dribble” or dance in the way America often expects Black-and-proud athletes to for their paychecks.
Will you be reading this issue of Ebony in November?
