By Jheri Hardaway
Staff Writer
The Perilous Fight paints a vivid picture of Colin Kaepernick's rise to notoriety in American culture. The painting would appear to be American Gothic meets Strange Fruit, but on a field of perfectly manicured game-day grass from the very first page. Colin Kaepernick wastes no energy on pleasantries or political correctness; he delivers facts, dates, names, and hard-earned truths with surgical precision just like his touchdown passes.
Colin shared details of being born to a teen mother in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1987. He was adopted by Rick and Teresa Kapernick at five weeks old, “They wouldn't believe me. They wouldn't understand. They wouldn't know what to say. I was certain of that. I knew my parents loved me, but they were profoundly uncomfortable discussing race. There was only so much Blackness they could stand. It was easier for me to hold my Blackness close, out of their sight. And keep quiet. I was different from the rest of them, my parents and my older sister and older brother, but we didn't talk about it. I just learned to live with the difference.”
While critics and pundits have attempted to reduce his voice and this memoir to a tell-all on his NFL sideline protest, the book is far more expansive: it is an intimate coming-of-age story and glimpse into a side of the American story that is often suppressed. Beginning in chapter one, where an early racial encounter with neighborhood peers shattered his childhood innocence, Kaepernick traces the awakening of his identity. As someone who also grew up in predominantly white environments, frequently navigating spaces as the only Black girl in the room, his early encounters resonated deeply. His reflections on icons like Allen Iverson and Randy Moss and the racial conflicts they overcame provide invaluable context for his evolving self-awareness as a biracial man who unapologetically identifies as Black.
This unvarnished reckoning brings the reader along on an American experience that, from the surface, appears like a dream. Stellar collegiate career, Nike deals, exceptional stats, yet a transparent perspective explains plainly Colin’s inability to escape the proverbial “system.” From his athletic evolution to encounters with law enforcement, education, healthcare, professional alignments, to marriage, no detail was spared. Kaepernick was transparent and informative in this autobiography, asking the tough questions: “If the police exist to protect and serve, my question had always been, protect and serve who? Protect and serve wealthy people; protect and serve white people. That's what I am called on to honor and celebrate? There's no room to question that, critique that, maybe even improve the institution? Can't I show my love for this country by fighting to make it better?”
Few memoirs provoke audible gasps, but Kaepernick achieves this feat by pulling back the curtain on moments the public only witnessed from the sideline. He finally adds the dimensions to his lived experience that we never could understand without Kaepernick’s perspective. He speaks plainly to the anxieties, compromises, and allegiances African Americans endure in White spaces. The parallels between the NFL Combine and the chattel slavery auction block. From professional dealings in the job setting to his family dynamic, to interactions with law enforcement, Kaepernick successfully describes the nuances of our Black reality in clear and digestible language.
A highlight of The Perilous Fight was learning more about radio legend Nessa Diab, Colin’s wife. They are understandably private about their personal life, yet the explanation of how they connected was a special part of the book. Kaepernick and Nessa embody the kind of cultural and political conviction that celebrity power couples could only aspire to. They are the real deal and have demonstrated such with their Know Your Rights Camps and other endeavors. Colin shared that Nessa a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, “On one trip, she gave me a copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I'd let it slip that I had never read it, and she was adamant that I'd be forever changed once I did. Nessa had grown up in a very pro-Black household. Her parents had exposed her to figures like Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, telling her that they were amazing people who had changed the world. That's how I'd viewed Allen Iverson and Randy Moss growing up. They'd changed my world and opened a window into my own Blackness. Ali and Malcolm were men who sacrificed everything for their beliefs. They were men of uncompromising integrity who deeply loved their people.” Colin now stands shoulder to shoulder with these heroes in the eyes of the informed.
This book should be required reading for young men across America. Way more than an athlete, Colin Kaepernick displays and explains the traits that truly make a man. He honors us with his truth, good, bad, and painful. Unwavering in his self-respect and dedicated to his beliefs, there is so much to learn and be inspired by. The drama is there. From NFL owners to media personalities to historians, and so many others, folks are called out by name in this book which is long overdue. Receipts and stats are all there. All in all, I’m still with Kap. Read his book for a deeper look into the realities of America today.
