- 1 In this article, the term "football" refers to the contact sport played in the United States where (...)
1Netflix has started to develop a new sports programming strategy to reach a wider audience. It involves eschewing lives sports coverage and instead focusing on Sports documentaries (Koblin J. and A. Blinder, 2003) like The Last Dance (Hehir J., 2020) or Athlete A (Cohen B. and J. Shenk, 2020). Colin in Black & White (CIBW), a six-episode documentary miniseries released on October 29, 2021, is part of this new strategy. It was created by the award-winning African American filmmaker Ava DuVernay and Colin Kaepernick a transracial adoptee (TRA) (biracial child/white parents) and former US football1 player who in 2016 decided to kneel instead of standing during the US anthem at the beginning of each football game to protest racial injustice. However, the series is not about this pivotal moment of sports protest, though there is a short 40-second reference in episode 3 [1:12-2:00]. Instead, it is a postmodernist take on a coming-of-age story about Colin Kaepernick’s life as a teenager (teen Colin), narrated by present-day Colin Kaepernick (adult Colin). In this article, postmodernism is understood as a mode of discourse characterized by self-referentiality, fragmentation and an intellectual stance that tends "to reject the universal validity of such principles as hierarchy, binary opposition, categorization, and stable identity" (HarperCollins, 2023).
- 2 This article follows the conventional use of capitalizing the "b" in black when describing people. (...)
- 3 They also had a boy and a girl through childbirth.
2Before any further discussion of CIBW is possible, it is important to present some context about Colin Kaepernick, Ava DuVernay and the racial tensions in the United States, which prompted his protest and that continue today. Born in 1987 of a white mother (Heidi Russo) and a Black2 father whose identity was and still is unknown (Reilly R., 2013), Colin was adopted when he was five weeks old by Rick and Teresa Kaepernick, two white people who lived in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The family3 then moved to Turlock, California four years later. Both places are rural with very little racial diversity or as Kaepernick describes them in episode 1, both towns were known for "dairy farms and a scarcity of Black people". Colin first burst onto the public stage when he took his professional football team, the San Francisco 49ers, to the Super Bowl in 2012 as their starting quarterback. However, he would forever change his image four years later when during the playing of the US national anthem before a pre-season game on August 14, 2016, he decided to sit rather than stand. Kaepernick explained his actions during a postgame interview:
"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses [black] people and people of color," Kaepernick told NFL [National Football League] Media in an exclusive interview after the game. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder" (Wyche S., 2016).
- 4 "In the months that followed Michael Brown’s and Eric Garner’s deaths (and the failures to indict t (...)
- 5 In 2013, George Zimmerman was acquitted for the killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenage (...)
- 6 Starrbury had already worked with DuVernay on the award-winning Netflix documentary "When They See (...)
3He was referring here to numerous incidents of police killing unarmed Black men and then not being held accountable.4 This stirred up the same public outrage and protests that had emerged in 2013 after George Zimmerman’s acquittal, which launched the Black Lives Matter movement.5 A few games later on September 2, Nate Boyer, a former Green Beret and football player, encouraged Kaepernick to kneel instead of sitting, as kneeling is considered more respectful (Witz B., 2023). From that moment on, Colin Kaepernick emerged as an activist and protest icon, not only for taking a stand but also because he sacrificed his career, since no NFL team would hire him after that moment, and he was even the subject of blistering criticism from then President Trump. When George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, was killed by a white policeman in 2020, people took to the streets and reproduced Kaepernick’s kneeling position in symbolic protest. This solidified the image of Kaepernick as an activist and when Ava DuVernay first met him, she said to him "I love your work", but clarified that the "work" she was talking about was his activism as she admitted that she knew nothing of his career in sport (Tiff Originals, 2021). They met again in 2020 when Kaepernick pitched the idea of telling his story. DuVernay then brought on Michael Starrbury6 as showrunner and head writer (Tiff Originals, 2021). DuVernay, herself had emerged as a groundbreaking independent documentary filmmaker interested in activism and social justice for Blacks and people of color. "DuVernay subscribes to the ethos that art serves a social purpose, debunks demeaning and normative assumptions about black people, and renders black humanity in all manner of genres and complexity"(Martin M.T., 2023: 57). In her opinion "[a]n artist and an activist are not so far apart" (Goldberg E., 2020). Her intentions for the miniseries are clear and they include activism, in this sense she and Kaepernick are in agreement.
4However, from the onset, the project had built-in tension since one of the two co-creators, Colin Kaepernick, is also the subject of the miniseries. Therefore, autobiography and biography, subjectivity and objectivity are in dialogue with each other throughout the six episodes. The filmmaker-subject relationship can be situated between two poles: antagonistic or complacent. Nevertheless, no matter where the cursor is placed, it raises questions about the representation of Colin Kaepernick’s real life compared to the filmic construction of it shown in the miniseries. This initial tension is made even more complex by three different types of storytelling discourse: adult Colin alone addressing the viewer, historical anecdotes and vignettes, and the TV sitcom about teen Colin that frames the miniseries. By playing with these different formats of the audiovisual text, the miniseries echoes a form of fragmentation of the object through a postmodern perspective. The storytelling becomes eclectic and self-referential.
- 7 Kaepernick describes himself as biracial but makes a distinction between his ethnic origins and his (...)
5Two additional areas of tension make up the story arc throughout all six episodes. The first is the choice between baseball or football for his future career. The second revolves around a biracial7 teen "reaching for [B]lackness" (Deggans E., 2023) in a white space described by teen Colin’s friend Jake as "whitey Whiteville" in episode 3. This white space is also linked to his white suburban well-off parents that have raised him and have passed on their white cultural values. They are loving and supportive, as long as Colin sticks to the confines of what is expected in white suburbia. This leads to teen Colin’s increasing awareness of the disconnect between how his parents and others see him compared to what he really experiences and how he chooses to see himself.
6As the title of the series indicates, Colin is constantly caught between two opposing forces, two choices. If activism is clearly the ultimate objective of the miniseries, the target audience is not as clearly defined. Are the creators targeting Black youth? The uninformed white population? The general public? To answer these questions, this article seeks to explore the dialectics created by the in-between and the various ways it is being expressed, whether it be in terms of the audiovisual text, sports, or racial identity.
Figure 1: Adult Colin watching teen Colin on the screen of the "gallery of his mind"
Courtesy of Netflix Copyright: © 2021 Netflix, Inc.
7CIBW is a mixture of different elements, as one reviewer remarked: "Colin is at once a coming-of-age tale, an anti-racism polemic, and a flipbook of Black history memes" (Alston J., 2021). DuVernay also highlights this blended aspect: "It [CIBW] breaks down into documentary, into graphics, animation, these little plays, little vignettes, this is like a collage of styles" (The Breakfast Club, 2021). These disparate elements are combined with the story of teen Colin which takes the form of a sitcom in the style of The Wonder Years reboot (ABC, 2021-present), Blackish (ABC, 2014-2022) or Everybody Hates Chris (UPN, 2005-2006 and The CW, 2006-2009). However, unlike the last example where Chris Rock narrates only in voice-over, they decided to create a third space where the adult Colin could physically appear on screen to narrate the events unfolding in the sitcom. This turns him into a "curator and tour guide of a museum about his life" (Alston, op. cit.). This metaphor is quite apt, as the space resembles an empty museum gallery with an adult Colin sitting opposite a screen that projects the sitcom for him to watch. The area in the gallery behind him is used as a place to project the vignettes that punctuate the documentary miniseries and provide lessons in Black history and culture. DuVernay explained that the entire space represents the gallery of his mind (Tiff Originals, 2021).
8Each episode of the miniseries follows more or less the same pattern: adult Colin in his gallery offers to "explain" something, in the typical expository style of a classic documentary, and this leads to a historical vignette either projected or reenacted within the gallery. These brief sequences (1-3 minutes) are very didactic and formal, matching up with what one would expect to see on the History Channel. They then lead into the sitcom’s longer sequences (10 to 15 minutes), as the viewer enters the screen that adult Colin is watching. The episode then alternates between these three modes in this order: adult Colin in the gallery—historical/cultural segment—sitcom.
- 8 Leave It to Beaver (CBS, 1957-58; ABC 1958-1963) was an American sitcom that revolved around a whol (...)
9The sitcom is a traditional one, set in white heteronormative suburbia. Aside from the issue of teen Colin’s racial identity, there are no other conflicts. Teen Colin (Jaden Michael) is handsome, a perfect student with a 4.0 G.P.A. He does not do drugs, does not have juvenile delinquent friends, and does not have a pregnant girlfriend that he got into trouble. By the same token, his white parents, played by the well-known established actors Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation, NBC, 2009-2015) and Mary Louise Parker (Weeds, Showtime, 2005-2012), are loving, they are not divorced, they do not fight, they are not poor. Therefore, if not for the aforementioned racial tensions, the sitcom is similar to what could be seen on an episode of Leave it Beaver. 8For example, in episode 3 Rick wants Colin to get his "mustache", the light fuzz covering his upper lip, shaved off but he resists. Later, Colin and Teresa tease Rick about the fact that he refuses to use the GPS and is always getting lost when driving.
- 9 A microaggression is a comment that subtly expresses a prejudiced opinion about a minority. For exa (...)
10In another moment of levity, the miniseries will take the serious subject of micro-aggressions9 and use it to create a humorous take on a job interview [E3, 16:33-18:34]. Adult Colin first talks about Black psychiatrist Chester M. Pierce, the first person to use the term "micro-aggressions" (Pierce C.M. et al., 1977). A job interview is then played out in the back of the "gallery". A white man with straight white hair in a suit is interviewing a Black man also in a suit, but with his hair in dreadlocks. This interview quickly turns into a parody of the play-by-play sports commentary of a football game. Each time a micro-aggression is committed during the interview there is sportscaster-style commentary, a rewinding of the videotape for an instant replay of the "foul". The rebellious and adolescent aspect of the series is also reinforced in this segment by a series of graphic overlays that convert the screen into a representation of a teenager’s schoolbook. These overlays take on the form of arrows, objects, words perhaps scribbled by a bored student.
11In addition to the mix of disparate elements constituting postmodernist fragmentation, the miniseries also incorporates a vibrant soundtrack of 35 different songs ranging from "Turnit a Loose" by James Brown, credited as the song that DJ Kool Herc used to launch the Hip-Hop movement (Ivory S., 2000: 12), the hip-hop classic "I Know You Got Soul" by Eric B & Rakim, popular hits "Work it" by Missy Elliot, "Vogue" by Madonna to a lesser known Christian rock country song "I Stand Redeemed" by Aaron Rice & Cooper Van Bascom, that teen Colin must suffer through during episode 3. Adding not only to the audio texture, but also giving the series an MTV feel as they are very short 20-second sound excerpts. This specific visual evocation is also suggested a lot in episode 1 through the graphic appearances of words and ideas in graffiti style. These words and ideas are sometimes defined by contemporary adult Colin as the narrator. They are also broached through the intertextual and metatextual approach of integrating music clips into the main narrative. For example, when teen Colin has just had his hair braided but it is too tight, the song "I Am Not My Hair" (2007) by Indie Arie featuring Akon is played:
- 10 Wearing dreadlocks and cornrows is commonly seen by corporate America as unprofessional, associatin (...)
- 11 African American Vernacular English (AAVE) Slang for "friends" or "dudes".
- 12 AAVE Slang for "house" or "residence".
Now just trying to be appreciated
Teen Colin (TC): These are too tight [He puts his hands on top of his head]
Nappy headed brother never had no ladies
And I hit the barber shop real quick
And had’em give me a li’l twist
And it drove them crazy
Then I couldn’t get no job
‘Cause Corporate wouldn’t hire no dreadlocks10
TC: This isn’t right [The camera then shows adult Colin looking on with compassion at his younger self]
Then I thought about my dogs11 on the block
Kind of understand why they chose to steal and rob
Was it the hair that got me this far
All these girls, these cribs12, these cars
I hate to say it but it seemed so flawed
‘Cause success didn’t come ‘til I cut it all off
[In the next scene, teen Colin appears with his hair unbraided.]
- 13 Missy Elliot covered in bees and then swallowing a car at 20:11 in Episode 1 from the clip of "Work (...)
12The lyrics not only mirror teen Colin’s own interrogations about exploring his Blackness through cornrows but also how he will be seen by others and having to compromise "appreciation by the ladies" for "success". The last lyric, "success didn’t come ‘til I cut it all off" not only announces the undoing of the braids in the next scene, but also the argument that his father will put forward about how he should just cut off all of his hair like Michael Jordan. As in this example, the songs are woven throughout the visual text and become an integral part of its meaning, in the same way a hip-hop song will sample another song and incorporate it, creating a new song from older material. The series has incorporated these songs and even excerpts from the corresponding music videos.13
13The form becomes a postmodern palimpsest where older elements are repurposed into the creation of a new audiovisual text. In telling teen Colin’s story but also having adult Colin physically narrating the series, tension is created between biography (DuVernay) and autobiography (Kaepernick). The documentary theorist Stella Bruzzi argues, "a documentary is a negotiation between reality on the one hand and image, interpretation and bias on the other" (Bruzzi S., 2006: 6) .This means a negotiation between the filmmaker, who shapes and controls what the final product will be, and the person being filmed, whose reality will be interpreted and converted into an audiovisual narrative for and by the audience.
14However, academic scholar Delphine Letort noted that the power relationship changes when the subject takes part in a documentary about their own life. "Speaking in the first person, which lends authority to their [the subject’s] opinions, their testimony highlights the differences between their perception of themselves and how others view them" (Letort D., 2019: 172). DuVernay described their relationship as a collaboration, but also said that Kaepernick had the "tie-breaking vote" if there was disagreement on his own story (The Breakfast Club, op. cit.). This then indicates that the cursor is closer to the complacent side of the filmmaker-subject relationship rather than the antagonistic side and situating the filmic construction of CIBW closer to the subjective memories of adult Colin rather than the exterior vision of DuVernay the filmmaker. One example of this is how the basketball player Allen Iverson is presented through the lens of the rose-tinted glasses of adult Colin. The documentary miniseries shows Iverson being arrested, holding up his middle finger; he is portrayed as an appealing rebel idolized by Kaepernick as a teenager and an adult. Adult Colin claims that the main reason Iverson is being criticized is because "he embraced his culture, he braided his hair". Yet, in the NBA there are other players with braided hair, for example Tyronn Lue (seen in the video excerpt defending against Iverson), who did not have Iverson’s bad boy reputation. The opposite is also true, several players with bad boy reputations, like Dennis Rodman, were not known for braiding their hair. Moreover, Iverson’s bad boy image was also linked to his hip-hop clothing style. Perhaps including this aspect with the braids would have been a more convincing argument.
15Other moments of selection include the presentation of Colin’s teenage years, which have probably also been "curated" i.e., negative behavior is not included in the story. As mentioned earlier, teen Colin is near perfect.
16Another case of historical simplification occurs in the presentation of the historical anecdote about Romare Bearden who turned down a professional baseball career because he did not want to renounce his racial identity. However, there are conflicting accounts about whether Connie Mack, the owner of the Philadelphia Athletics, thought he was white (O’Meally R.G., 2019: 9) or asked him to pass as white (Parham J., 2012) as the miniseries claims.
- 14 They are mentioned briefly in episode 6.
17As for Colin’s personal life and family, we can also wonder why so little time is given to his two white siblings, Kyle and Devon14, and his biological white mother Heidi Ruso who publicly criticized his kneeling protests. While he does not hesitate to push back against certain critics via the miniseries, he is surprisingly quiet about her. This may be another instance of curation so as to avoid complicated personal family matters.
Figure 2. Adult Colin commenting in expository mode on the football combine.
Courtesy of Netflix Copyright: © 2021 Netflix, Inc.
18This "curation" may have also been at work in shaping the narrative of the baseball vs football career decision that dominates the last three episodes of the series, especially episode 4, "The decision", and episode 6, "Dear Colin". Colin excels at each sport, they each have their own particularity, but they will come to symbolize more than that in the miniseries.
- 15 Kaepernick was born in 1987 so he would have been a senior in 2005.
19Baseball is a traditional American sport, referred to as America’s pastime, it has been around much longer than football. During the 1840s, there were amateur Baseball fraternities (Rader B.G., 2018: 12-30) and in the 1860s, the first professional clubs started to emerge (Ibid., p. 41-53). Baseball has a segregated past. In 1920, Rube Foster founded the Negro leagues which had eight Black teams. The Negro leagues started to wane after Jackie Robinson became the first Black player to integrate the Major leagues in 1947, and eventually folded in 1960 (Heaphy L.A., 2003: 224). If we look at the percentage of Blacks in baseball in 200515 when these events took place in the sitcom, it was about 9% and the number for Black pitchers was 2% (Armour M. and D.R. Levitt, 2023).
- 16 See also "Le Recreation Board et l’institutionnalisation de la ségrégation raciale" (Martin-Breteau (...)
20In comparison, the American Football League, which would then become the National Football League (NFL) was created in 1920 (Crepeau R.C., 2014: 3). Although Black players had been banned from joining the NFL, there were no negro football leagues. The first Black player to play for the NFL was Fritz Pollard from 1920 to 1927, and in this period, eight more players joined (Carroll J.M., 1998). However, after the Depression, there were no more Black players in the NFL as George Preston Marshall, the owner of the then Boston (Washington) Redskins, imposed a ban on Black players (Smith T.G., 1988).16 The first player to break the color barrier in the modern era was Kenny Washington in 1946 (Crepeau, op. cit., p. 41). The NFL is roughly 65.5% Black according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) (Lapchick R., 2006: 15).
21Both sports also differ in terms of the physical demands on the body. In baseball, only one full team of 11 players is present on the field at a time playing defense against individual batters on offense; so, it involves a lot of physical inactivity. Even some players on the field may not have to do much, for example if you are in the outfield and nobody hits the ball into your area. There is limited contact between the players except when running towards a base, where defensive and offensive players might collide. Football, on the other hand, is a very violent sport that involves constant contact among both teams who stay on the field for long periods of time, changing only when the other team has the ball and the defensive and the offensive team must switch. Protective pads and helmets are mandatory as violent tackles have been linked to brain damage. Moreover, the position of the quarterback is a central but also vulnerable position. He leads the offense like the general of an army and has to memorize all the different plays.
- 17 One 2010 study concluded "Black quarterbacks were primarily described with words and phrases that e (...)
22Baseball and football, similarly both portray racism as a constant obstacle for teen Colin. In football, he does not correspond to the prototype of the quarterback. In episode 2, during the tryout for varsity, the coach puts teen Colin on the Freshman team saying that playing QB is more than just throwing the ball: "I have to know that you can command an offense". The underlying message is that he is not intelligent enough to be a QB. Several research studies on the racial dimension of football positions, especially the role of the quarterback have confirmed these prejudiced beliefs (Ferrucci P. and E.C. Tandoc, 2017; Knoss T., 2017). 17
23The racism he experiences in baseball is linked to being often the only Black person in a white space. In episode 3, teen Colin travels to remote areas of California where people are very religious, conservative, and have never seen Black people before. This results in constant micro-aggressions, as hotel staff keep a watchful eye on him because they think he is trying to steal something. His parents are asked whether they are OK, fearing that the Black teenager next to them might be putting them in danger. One person even asks Colin whether he was born in the United States. At each city the series shows what Jake, Colin’s white friend, can do and what happens when Colin does the same thing. For example, Jake gets a second helping of ice cream. When Colin asks, the woman says, "You already got one".
24Both sports and their environments have their disadvantages and the choice between the two becomes a proxy for Colin’s character, a capacity to keep the faith and not bend under outside pressure. This allows the viewer to understand why he made that fateful decision to protest in 2016 and did not modify his stance despite the blowback.
25Although not stated, the series suggests that the choice between baseball and football can be regarded as a metaphorical analogy of his choice between two racial worlds. Baseball represents the acceptable white world, where there are very few Blacks, as seen in episode 3. It is the rational and logical choice, following his brain. It is what is expected of him by his parents, his friends, his coaches and the entire high school who all represent societal "outside" pressure. Everyone assumes that he will play baseball because he is good and has numerous offers. It also means financial security. In episode 4, a representative for the Chicago Cubs suggests that he bypass college and go straight to the majors and make millions of dollars.
26Football, on the other hand, represents the Black world. This was made clear from the very first images of episode 1. It is a world populated by Blacks. It represents the emotional choice, following his heart, following his dreams. It is his true passion. This is what he declared to Roger Theder to convince him to accept him into his camp. It represents his inner world and the way he sees himself, a desire to choose his own individual "road-not-taken" built on faith. This means taking risks which are not only financial, as he has no offers to play football, but physical as well, given that this sport is more dangerous than baseball.
27Threaded through episode 4 is the story of Romare Bearden, a Black pitcher who could have been the first Black player in baseball, 15 years before Jackie Robinson, but he would have had to pass as white and thus, as Kaepernick states, "sell his soul". Bearden thus left baseball behind and went on to become a famous artist. Referred to by Manhattan gallery owner Arne Ekstrom as "the pictorial historian of the black world", he introduced Black American cultural codes into white spaces (Parham, op. cit.). The historical anecdote serves as a model for doing the right thing. In Colin’s case, this is not only about morally doing the right thing, like when he refuses to take the stolen rims that his friend Jake offers him, but also about doing right by himself and resisting the peer pressure of an entire town that had their hopes on him becoming a famous baseball player. This episode foreshadows Kaepernick’s future decision to kneel, that is do something that he believes in, even if it means not conforming to what is expected of him and making other people angry.
28Of course, after he has made his fateful career decision, and despite his best efforts he still does not have a football scholarship. This will be used for great narrative effect, perhaps slightly "curated" in a dramatic 11th hour ending, when out of the blue, he gets a scholarship to the University of Nevada, what’s more, from the coach who was his harshest critic.
29His story touches on the universal themes of an underdog who triumphs over great obstacles to succeed, a person of faith who responds to a calling. It also evokes to a certain extent the Black experience in the United States where access to the American Dream means having to go up against not only the impossible odds of an underprivileged environment but also white privilege. But this miniseries is not only about overcoming obstacles to find one’s calling, it is also about the struggle to find one’s identity.
Figure 3. Teen Colin visually caught between Jake on the left and Eddie on the right.
Courtesy of Netflix Copyright: © 2021 Netflix, Inc.
- 18 Research has shown that biracial children develop four identity strategies: identifying exclusively (...)
30The postmodern fragmented discourse in CIBW is mirrored by a similar postmodern fragmentation of Colin’s identity. As a biracial child adopted by whites in an all-white environment, a missing racial mirror has been added to the identity trauma of adoption, which is then compounded by the self-identity struggles of biracial ethnicity.18 This is further complicated by adolescence, a crucial period where identity formation takes place. TRA Rhonda Roorda, sums up Colin’s specific challenges:
Identity formation is […] the most important developmental task of adolescence. Moreover, "a central part of identity development, especially for those who are not in the white-Anglo majority, is ethnic identity […]". Now imagine that a person in the midst of such a crisis is coping not only with the usual adolescent angst but with having been imbued with the norms of white culture and little or no access to black culture. Furthermore, they are struck at the same time with the imperative that they also learn to navigate in a world in which racism and discrimination remain everyday problems. (Roorda R.M., 2015: XIV)
- 19 These findings have been confirmed by numerous studies. (Montgomery J.E. and N.A. Jordan, 2018).
31This is why parents of TRAs are advised to provide racial mirrors for their children as soon as possible to help them build a healthy identity.19 Colin was adopted in 1987 at a time when white adoptive parents immersed their children primarily within the white environment and paid little or no attention to racial differences (Barn R., 2013: 1276). Colin’s parents resorted to the "color blind" approach, described here by African American TRA Asher D. Isaacs:
- 20 It is assumed that the author meant “African-American”.
My adoptive parents believed that the world should be color blind, so they raised me in the same way as they did their three biological children. My family never addressed the fact that my skin was brown or my hair curly. Nor did they discuss with me social and political issues relating to the African-African [sic]20 community. My parents did not see a need to expose me to Black culture, history, or role models. (Isaacs A.D., 1994: 126)
- 21 S1E04: Rebecca, who is white, asks a Black woman for help in finding a barber to cut her adopted Bl (...)
- 22 This evokes a similar reaction from a Korean TRA: "After years of having her birth race and culture (...)
32Teen Colin, therefore, lacking racial mirrors, seeks out Black culture to connect with his Black identity. Episode 1, aptly named "Cornrows", spotlights this desire, as it recounts Colin’s attempts to get his hair braided like his idol Allen Iverson. Yet, his parents do not fully grasp the significance of what this means to Colin. Nevertheless, Teresa, in a scene reminiscent of This is Us21, asks two Black co-workers for help. The show then cuts to teen Colin and Teresa in front of the store Urban Exchange. As they enter, extradiegetic hip-hop music is heard ("They Want Efx"—Das Efx), the camera pans in a circular movement to show different types of urban clothes, shoes, and jewelry, while Black customers are happily trying them on and then buying them. Teresa is visibly uncomfortable in this unknown Black space, but for teen Colin this is an epiphany. He stares wide-eyed taking in the whole scene while adult Colin comments "I’d never been anywhere like this before. It felt like […] me".22 This new space is like a foreign country, with its own culture and its own language as evidenced by this exchange between Teresa and Erica the hairdresser.
Erica: You want me to brush shorty like your boy AI?
Teresa: No, we want braids like Allen Iverson.
Erica: That’s what I said. C’mon Colin let’s get it. [22:02]
- 23 Scholar Kobena Mercer notes that braiding one’s hair is a Black cultural activity and an esthetic r (...)
- 24 Blue black is a term that means a very dark black color.
33Teresa’s incapacity to understand African American Vernacular English is a manifestation of the larger inability of his parents to fathom teen Colin’s inner desire to know his Blackness in general and getting cornrows in particular. She enters this "foreign" Black world with trepidation, wondering how long this phase will last. Her openness will not last very long, for when one of the coaches tells his parents to cut their son’s hair and Colin asks why, his mother bluntly tells him "Because you look like a thug!". This outburst by his mother is the dramatic emotional moment of episode 1 where teen Colin realizes that his parents do not fully support his quest to discover his Blackness and even worse, he feels betrayed as they side with the oppressive forces that thwart his pursuit of his Black identity by forcing him to cut his hair.23 Another example of his parents’ conflictual relationship with their son’s growing interest in Black culture and Black esthetics occurs in episode 5 "Crystal". Colin wants to take Crystal, a girl described as "blue Black"24 to the homecoming dance, Teresa does not say anything but again thinks this is a phase. When Colin and Crystal are no longer together, she encourages Colin to take Lindsay, a white cheerleader, to the Winter Formal. Later in the episode, Teresa hides the framed picture of Colin and Crystal and instead proudly hangs up the picture of Colin and Lindsay. However, this is indicative of Teresa’s desire not Colin’s, as he has feelings for Crystal not Lindsay, in the same way that he feels passionate about football and not baseball.
34His parents’ inability to see things from Colin’s point of view, to enter his world is powerfully highlighted in episode 3. Every week the family travels to a different city to take part in a baseball tournament. The same sequence is repeated for each city: Colin is in bed, Teresa in curlers taps his door with her fingers, they have breakfast, they get in the car, Rick turns on the radio and listens to the same Christian rock lyrics "I will rise in victory" ("I stand redeemed"—Aaron Rice and Cooper Van Bascom), they drive past a police officer whose radar gun beeps and the officer does not do anything. Yet, when Colin is behind the wheel the police officer’s behavior changes. He pulls Colin over.
Colin (C): Why’d you stop me officer?
Police officer (P): I’ll ask the questions. Where are you headed?
C: Lancaster.
[He looks in car and sees Colin’s parents]
P: You folks all right?
Teresa (T): We’re ok, he’s new to driving. He has a permit.
P: Can I see it? [Colin goes to pull out his permit] Whoa! Keep your hands where I can see them. [The police officer steps back and puts his hand on his gun holster in a sudden defensive gesture.]
Rick (R): Whoa. He’s just trying to show you his permit. [Colin has both his hands up, dramatic extradiegetic music playing]
P: Nice and easy.
R: What was the reason for the stop, officer?
P: Who are you?
R: His father. [Officer raises his head in surprise]
T: He’s adopted.
P: Well, he was going a little too fast. [Police officer has now taken up a calmer tone of voice]
[The policeman holds out Colin’s permit, and then when Colin reaches to take his card the policeman suddenly pulls it back] Slow down kid.
[Colin breathes shakily, he is still trying to recover from what has just happened and tries to calm his breathing]
T: You dodged a bullet [Rick chuckles]
R: Yeah. You just beat your first ticket. [He pats Colin on the shoulder] [20:45–23:02]
35The above exchange highlights the disconnect between the police officer’s behavior and the actual threat of violence that Colin represents. He is in a nice car, with two white people, his manner is non-threatening and his demeanor is hesitant. Culturally, he is a white teenager with all the attributes of the white suburban middle-class. The only difference, and this seems to be the point here, is the color of his skin. His timid "Why’d you stop me officer?" is met by an aggressive "I will ask the questions". From this moment onward, the tension grows and only starts to subside when his white parents intervene and explain that he is their adopted son.
- 25 As previously discussed, this has been the case of numerous encounters where unarmed African Americ (...)
36This encounter has traumatized Colin, his breathing is rapid and shaky, he looks dazed. On the other hand, his parents are totally oblivious to Colin’s stress and how he experienced the situation. They imagine that the stakes of the encounter are only a speeding ticket the figurative interpretation of "you dodged a bullet". For Colin, it is the literal interpretation of the expression that is at stake, as he could have been shot by the officer.25
37Seeing and being seen are two very strong recurring themes in the series which serve to underscore miscommunication and racial conflict. Because the police officer sees all Blacks through his biased perspective as potentially dangerous, he is not able to see Colin’s humanity. Rick and Teresa are also incapable of seeing how being pulled over really affected Colin and Teresa chooses not to see the picture of Colin and Crystal. When Colin has to make his decision between baseball and football in episode 4, he says "I wasn’t prepared to see how the world was seeing me" [13:00], evoking the dialectic of the "double-consciousness" described by W.E.B. Du Bois in The Souls of Black Folk.
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity […] (Du Bois W.E.B., 2007: 6)
38Here Du Bois points out that Blacks are not allowed to own their true awareness of who they are but must always subvert this to the way the exterior world sees them. This is why Black parents give their sons "the talk", meaning they explain that the white world has already cast them in the role of a potential aggressor. Their behavior must therefore be oriented towards working against this preconception of violent behavior, i.e., when confronted with the police making no sudden movements, no raising of the voice, keeping their hands visible at all times.
39This need to inform Black youth about their culture and the potential dangers that they will face is central to the goals of CIBW and key in the latent criticism of the "color blind" approach of Colin’s white adoptive parents who neither exposed him to Black culture nor prepared him for racial discrimination.
40Coming back to the questions evoked at the beginning of this article, the miniseries clearly targets Blacks the same age as teen Colin, giving them the tools to feel empowered and know their rights as human beings. The goal is to re-humanize dehumanized beings, fulfilling what DuVernay described as the social purpose of art that "renders black humanity in all manner of genres and complexity" (Martin, op. cit.). Adult Colin expresses this goal clearly at the end of episode 1: "I didn’t have the knowledge, wisdom, or language to fight back. I couldn’t rebel because I didn’t know how. But now? Now I know how, and I will."
41The show in this sense is performing a generalized all-purpose version of "the talk", with adult Colin in the role of the father and the viewer and teen Colin in the role of the son. Each episode ends with a moral lesson linked to empowerment, believing in oneself, and owning one’s inner truth. The second targeted group is the uninformed audience, presumably white but also Blacks unfamiliar with their culture like Colin. Blackness is not only physical skin pigmentation and attributes like hair; it is also cultural, including speech, dress and musical taste. The white people in this group are very much like his parents, they mean well but are ignorant of Black history and only see mainstream mediated aspects used for consumption like hip-hop and rap music, while being totally unaware of the micro-aggressions that Black people constantly experience in white spaces. According to actor Jaden Michael: "[t]he true audience is the miseducated or those who are misunderstanding his message, and that’s who I hope I can connect with" (Martin M., 2021). In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Kaepernick says the same thing:
I also think that as we look at broader society, part of what the show speaks to is how whiteness shows up…and how we engage with it…but also the pressures, the microaggressions, the racism, and what that shows up as. I hope it’s an opportunity for white people to be able to look at their actions…how they show up in society and how they are engaging with Black and Brown folks…and look at their own privilege and perspective and be able to take away from this what actions they can take to improve the dynamics and the oppressive nature of systems and positions of power and privilege that they have. (Brockington A., 2021)
- 26 Figuratively and literally, as the very first image is a close-up of Kaepernick’s face.
42However, given the well-known polarizing protagonist, his strong political advocacy embedded in the series, the hot-button issue of race relations, and the provocative and sometimes "in your face"26 storytelling, CIBW does not target the general public, only interested in watching another entertaining Netflix sports biopic.
43This article has shown how CIBW explores the in-between through opposing forces and choices in the audiovisual text, sports and identity. The show takes the viewer on a voyage to the unexplored Black territory seen through the eyes of teen Colin.
- 27 It is also ironic that Kaepernick’s biological mother, Heidi Russo, left Colin a letter to be opene (...)
44It resorts to a postmodernist take by blurring and mixing different discursive forms, different audiovisual formats and styles. Adult Colin himself is an omniscient and omnipotent narrator imposing his point of view on what he observes, provocatively transforming the NFL combine into a slave auction, in episode 1, or entering into past reenactments, even entering into the space of the sitcom to leave a note for his teenage self. This is an intertextual nod and a wink to Between the World and Me (Coates T., 2015) written as a letter to the author’s teenaged son. Coates’ book was inspired, itself, by James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (Baldwin J., 1963).27 This then becomes a case where the intertextual reference is itself a reference, much like the sampling of songs that contain sampling such as "Work it" by Missy Elliot.
- 28 Episode 1, Ava DuVernay; Episode 2, Sheldon Candis; Episode 3 and Episode 4, Robert Townsend; Episo (...)
- 29 Episode 1, Michael Starrbury, Ava DuVernay, Colin Kaepernick; Episode 2, Evan Ball; Episode 3, Teri (...)
45The use of three discourses, five directors28, nine writers29, two co-creators, two protagonists using self-referentiality (adult Colin watching teen Colin) as well as numerous other fragmented effects of layering has created a sitcom/documentary/pamphlet postmodernist form par excellence. The series also aligns with postmodernist theory, by challenging dominant narratives, re-examining longstanding social and cultural assumptions such as the "intelligent" white football player vs the "physical" Black football player.
46Yet, the postmodernist form is in opposition to its message. The miniseries stresses binary choices, the white characters are painted with a broad brush and each episode ends with a moral. The final scene of episode 6 also ends on a moral note meant to summarize the message of all six episodes. This clearly drawn dichotomy and moral advocacy runs counter to the very definition of postmodernism, which embraces moral relativism and a rejection of binary oppositions (HarperCollins, op. cit.). If the final message of CIBW is clear: "[t]o the underestimated, the overlooked and the outcast, trust your power"; the effect is not. Although the series might have been able to raise awareness about issues facing Blacks in America it is hard to know if this translates into actual change. Three years after the release of CIBW, Donald Trump still has a firm grip on the Republican base and Florida Public Schools will now teach their students that slavery taught Blacks useful skills (Planas A., 2023). Nevertheless, it may be too early to properly appreciate the possible beneficial effects of CIBW on race relations in the USA. Only the passage of time and further research can provide us with the necessary critical distance to answer these questions.