Colin in Black & White: Colin Kaepernick’s potent Netflix series

Protesting racial inequality and police brutality, Kaepernick become a lightning rod in the wider conversation about prejudice in America. But for all the people who supported him and repeated his powerful gesture, there were just as many vocal detractors.

Since that season with the San Francisco 49ers, when he first knelt on the pitch, Kaepernick hasn’t been signed by another NFL team, a fact that hangs over the entirety of Colin in Black & White’s six episodes.

Co-created by Kaepernick and Selma DuVernay, the poignant and smart biographical series has a touch of The Wonder Years, if The Wonder Years was set in the early 2000s and also heavily laced with racial commentary.

Charting Kaepernick’s formative experiences through high school as a star athlete of three sports – baseball, basketball and football – Colin in Black & White is an effective narrative through which to tell the wider story of America and race.

The adopted black son of a middle-class white couple living in a predominantly white California town, Colin’s awakening of his difference coincided with his singular focus of playing professional football, even though he was actually better at baseball.

His passion for football is achingly clear throughout, which makes the fact that Kaepernick hasn’t played a game in years all the more tragic.

Teen actor Jaden Michael gives a star-making performance as the young Colin. He’s a mix of wounded confusion, determination and pure charisma.

Every episode is a story of Colin’s experience through the prism of race, and the series makes no apologies for that – it basically told you so in the title.

Most of it isn’t overt, but coded behaviour that continuously told the young Colin that he was less than.

The hotel staff who assumed he wasn’t a guest, the umpire who knocked him for reacting to a bad call when he let a white player slide for much worse behaviour only moments earlier, and even his own parents for telling him his cornrows make him look like a thug.

The way the series depicts his parents Teresa (Mary-Louise Parker) and Rick (Nick Offerman) is really interesting. They clearly love and support him, evident by the great lengths they go to help him achieve his dream.

But it’s also true that they were not aware of how all their privileges didn’t extend to their black son, like the manager who assumed Colin was a menacing stranger harassing these nice white folks until they told her he was their child.

They later comment how nice she was after she fawned over how noble and sacrificing they were to adopt him as Colin looks at them with near-incredulity. They didn’t pick up on her casual racism because they weren’t primed to notice.

And Colin in Black & White wants you to notice. The real Kaepernick doesn’t just narrate the series, he is the framing device, addressing the camera directly and giving young Colin’s experiences historical and social context.

It’s not subtle and it often feels a little sledgehammer-y, but perhaps part of the whole discourse – in which Colin in Black & White is in direct conversation with – is about how subtlety and moderation hasn’t done marginalised communities many favours.

When Kaepernick took that knee, he wasn’t being subtle, he wasn’t asking for permission, he wasn’t trying to not offend. He was making noise and it made a lot of people uncomfortable, people who didn’t want to confront the truth about very real prejudice and injustice.

Colin in Black & White wasn’t going to be subtle because Kaepernick isn’t subtle, and that’s exactly what makes it, and him, so potent.

Colin in Black & White premieres on Netflix on Friday, October 29 at 6pm AEDT

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Originally published as Colin in Black & White: Colin Kaepernick’s potent Netflix series