Colin Kaepernick Has Never Stopped Fighting

Colin Kaepernick on The Perilous Fight

Tamira Chapman sits down with Colin Kaepernick for an intimate conversation about protest, principle, sacrifice, the NFL, institutional power and the decisions that followed one of the most consequential acts of protest in modern American sports.

When Protest Meets Power

The conversation also explores one of the most debated chapters of Kaepernick’s story: the relationship between activism, the NFL, entertainment and institutional power. Kaepernick offers his recollection of private conversations and meetings that occurred as the controversy surrounding his protest intensified. Among them are encounters involving Jay-Z and Roc Nation. Kaepernick recalls initially viewing Jay-Z’s public support as meaningful. He describes reaching out after Jay-Z wore his jersey publicly and later being approached about potentially appearing during a performance.

For Kaepernick, however, the distinction between supporting a movement and turning its symbolism into entertainment mattered. He also recounts subsequent conversations with Roc Nation as his future in the NFL became increasingly uncertain, including discussions about representation and what cultural influence might mean in negotiations with the league.

His telling is personal, complicated and, at times, painful. The relationship would become even more consequential when the NFL entered its partnership with Jay-Z and Roc Nation. Kaepernick describes urging Jay-Z to consider what the partnership represented while Kaepernick remained outside the league. He remembers believing that the NFL was searching for cultural credibility at precisely the moment it was facing intense criticism over its handling of his protest. The two men ultimately made different choices. Kaepernick is unsparing about how he experienced that difference. Yet the larger question raised by the conversation extends beyond either man.

The Difference Between Access and Change

Throughout the conversation, Kaepernick returns to a distinction that has followed his activism from the beginning.Representation inside an institution does not necessarily mean the institution itself has changed.Access can create influence. It can also create the appearance of progress without addressing the underlying condition that produced the protest.

That tension remains relevant far beyond professional football. Corporations, universities, media companies and other institutions continue to wrestle with questions about racial equity, representation and the commitments they made during the height of America’s racial reckoning. Kaepernick’s story asks readers to examine what happens after the statements are released, the campaigns end and public attention moves somewhere else. Who remains committed when commitment becomes inconvenient?

ACCESS IS NOT THE SAME AS CHANGE.

Kaepernick’s story raises a larger question about whether representation inside an institution necessarily means the institution itself has changed.

What Are You Willing to Lose?

One of the most compelling elements of Kaepernick’s story is that his decisions cannot be separated from their consequences.There was money he did not earn. There were opportunities he did not accept. There was a career he did not get back. There were relationships that changed. And there were years during which the world debated his motives while he lived with the consequences of the decision that started it all.

That makes his story more complicated than the mythology that can eventually surround public figures. It is one thing to say you would stand on principle. It is another thing to watch millions of dollars disappear and continue standing there.During his conversation with Chapman, Kaepernick makes clear that those sacrifices were not theoretical. He understood what he was giving up. He made the decisions anyway.

Beyond the Knee

Nearly a decade after Kaepernick first knelt, the image remains one of the defining symbols of protest in American sports. But The Perilous Fight asks readers to look beyond the image. The knee was a moment. The decisions that followed became a life.

Kaepernick’s work through the Know Your Rights Camp, his writing and his continued engagement with questions of race, power and institutional accountability suggest that he never understood his protest as a single act. For him, the fight continued after the cameras moved elsewhere.That may ultimately be the more difficult form of resistance. Not the moment everyone sees. The choices made afterward, when fewer people are watching

A Conversation About More Than Football

The Storehouse & Friends conversation with Colin Kaepernick is not really about football. It is about power. It is about money. It is about race. It is about the compromises institutions ask people to make in exchange for access. And it is about the uncomfortable distance between admiring someone’s courage and being willing to pay the price that courage sometimes requires. Kaepernick has spent years being interpreted by other people. In The Perilous Fight, he takes greater control of that story. And in his conversation with Storehouse & Friends, he explains what some of those decisions looked like from the chair in which he was actually sitting.

The result is not a neat story about heroes and villains. It is something more useful. It is an invitation to consider the decisions we make when our values finally cost us something. Because eventually, conviction asks a question of all of us: What are you willing to give up for what you say you believe?

Watch Tamira Chapman’s full conversation with Colin Kaepernick on Storehouse & Friends. Colin Kaepernick’s The Perilous Fight is available wherever books are sold.