By Anees Aref.
What makes this story one of those things you want to grab a hold of, is that you’re able to utilize sports, which a huge portion of our society spends an extraordinary amount of time diving into. So, if you can use that to bring in the larger story—the social issues—which is really what this is about more than it is about sport, gave us that opportunity.”
—Filmmaker Tommy Walker
Kaepernick & America is a compelling new documentary film chronicling former NFL football player Colin Kaepernick and his journey from athlete to activist as well as the ever-shifting national conversation surrounding the quarterback’s taking of a knee during the pregame playing of the national anthem. Out of the league since 2016, Kaepernick’s symbolic protest of police brutality has grown in its powerful relevance as subsequent instances of police killings of black Americans, notably the May, 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin has elevated national consciousness and demands for reform of the police and justice system. I spoke with the film’s co-directors Tommy Walker and Ross Hockrow about how Kaepernick’s story allows us to see the interaction between sports, race, and the wider cultural dynamics surrounding them:
Why make a film about Colin Kaepernick?
Tommy Walker: Both of us are into sports. I played and I coached for many years…but I’ve also, as has Ross, the majority of my career has been on documenting stories that are social issue oriented. So, for me, this was where the two meet.
Walking through people, certainly in this country, on issues of race is—as you pointed out—extraordinarily complex. What makes this story one of those things you want to grab a hold of, is that you’re able to utilize sports, which a huge portion of our society spends an extraordinary amount of time diving into. So, if you can use that to bring in the larger story—the social issues—which is really what this is about more than it is about sport, gave us that opportunity.
Ross Hockrow: Yeah, and I would second that. Sports and social issues, the crossover sweet spot that interests me the most, and I think sports is a good metaphor for life in general. So anytime sports can be used as a window to talk about a larger conversation, sign me up.
You mention that it’s complicated. People like to enjoy sports. These issues that are uncomfortable, that are difficult, in a way they can interfere with the easy enjoyment of sports…What’s been the general reaction to the film? With Michael Jordan, I didn’t know anything about the comment of him saying “Republicans buy shoes too”. Growing up, you don’t think about that.
RH: Seems like people like it. On something you said, I’d like to push back a little bit…the “bringing up of issues” … when issues come up that are part of our society, our culture, our country, come up in sports, to me that’s part of sports, because it’s been happening the entire time we’ve been playing sports. Sports has always been a window into this conversation. Something that people have to learn, is that when someone says “oh, it interferes with our enjoyment of the game…” that’s a luxury that you have. Not everybody gets to experience that. So, to me, when Kaepernick was taking a knee it’s like “oh, leave that stuff out of sports,” well it’s easy for you to say that. Because the issue doesn’t affect you. To me it’s not only part of sports, it’s an important part of sports.
TW: I would add to that, you know it’s funny you brought up Jordan… I’m Jordan’s contemporary. I went to the University of Virginia, so I saw him play when he was at (North) Carolina. The thing that’s interesting about Jordan’s perspective on “Republicans buy sneakers too” is that, in the 1980s and the timeframe that Jordan was kind of coming up out of college, political movements were dead in the water. There was no activism, nothing happening in society during that period of time. So, when he made that comment, it was a reflection of who we were in society, just as sports often does mirror the things that we do, how we behave in society, the choices and the decisions that we make…it’s always a bit of a reflection. So, to Ross’s point, there is a direct line and connection thereof.
Were there any other films or filmmaker that influenced you guys while making this project?
TW: I think it’s more along the lines of what are the crosscurrents, what are the issues that exist in society? Those are the things that influence me the most. You know, Mahmoud Abdul-Raouf—it’s the storylines that I find interesting. I grew up in the 60s and 70s as a kid, so very young certainly but Tommy Smith and John Carlos and that moment is something that resonates with me. The themes that run through are the things that influence me more than anything else I’d say.
Did you guys see the OJ: Made in America documentary series that aired on ESPN? Because it was another thing examining through one athlete’s experience culture, race, sports…
RH: I’m not going to compare the two. That film, series, would influence me in the crafting of a story. Not necessarily the issues themselves.
TW: Again, I’m going to go back to what I was saying before, it’s two different times in our society. Ezra’s a friend (Ezra Edelman, director of the OJ series) … and I admire him greatly. But that was a different time, than the times we’re living in right now. And frankly, Ross and I were doing this project together and I think the most important thing for us to do was to concentrate on our relationship as directors. Directing a project that’s as heavy lifting as this one is socially, you want to make sure you’re in constant communication. That’s an important relationship to have. There’s enough influence that we’re both bringing to the table that I think we wanted to make this ours.
It’s funny you bring up Mahmoud Abdul Raouf… he basically disappeared, you haven’t heard from him since, it’s been over twenty years.
TW: I think he stuck to his meaning, to why he did what he did. I think Kaepernick’s similar in that way. The action was larger than the career, in a way.
With Abdul-Raouf, it disappeared with him. You hear some guys bring him up here and there….
TW: Well George Floyd didn’t follow Abdul-Raouf…. In other words, after Kaepernick knelt, people that were interested in football and sports largely forgot about him too…until George Floyd.
In the film, you talk about (Kaepernick) being adopted by the white family. The anecdote that stuck out was when he talks about in elementary school, when he’s drawing a picture of himself and his family, he uses different crayons, and different colors for him. It seems like it stuck with him in a way….
RH: I mean I can’t speak for him, but he talks about it. A Neuroscientist would say yes, but I’m neither a neuroscientist nor a psychologist. But I would suspect that yeah, that had an influence.
TW: Sure, I would say it absolutely did. I grew up in a predominantly white community in a similar way that he did, and you feel eyes on you. You can only imagine how the eyes are now transfixed on you when your family doesn’t look like you, or doesn’t necessarily think that you’re always with them if you’re in a public place and come up and say something to you and act as though you’re not part of that family even though you are part of that family. So that’s the kind of thing that not only stays with you, it becomes part of who you are, and part of what your identity is as you grow into the world.
Did you try to reach out to Kaepernick during the making of this film?
TW: Like you said in the beginning…he’s been quiet. He really hasn’t wanted to be public-facing specifically. He’s really wanted to be more behind the scenes, and especially while we were shooting this film. We were also aware that he wanted to create his own content, produce his own projects. And so he’s not gonna really sit for anybody else right now, he’s going to do the project that he wants to do which is certainly not only his right, but we support.
If you compare the NFL, clearly they didn’t have a favorable response to Kaepernick’s action. What do you guys think about the NFL and their response to protests or expression of political or social activism versus say the NBA. Because even before Kaepernick started taking knee, Lebron James and a few other players started making comments about police brutality, and they weren’t criticized at the time…and this is preceding Kaepernick.
RH: To simplify it, the NFL is an owner’s league, and the NBA is a player’s league. So, the NFL does what’s best for the owners, and the NBA does what’s best for their star players because the business model is built around that whereas the NFL is not. Those owners… you don’t have to be a sociologist to figure out where some of their stances lie or what’s good for business. That stuff’s pretty well documented.
TW: And the audience is different as well.
It’s a huge audience for the NFL.
RH: The NFL audience is bigger… the NBA can’t piss off LeBron James. They can’t afford to do that. So they have to at least cater, or account for the opinions and beliefs…and I think they do a pretty good job for the most part.
TW: I think the NFL is in conflict with itself and society. If we were to put two things together, and we have Colin Kaepernick over here and Deshaun Watson over here…what Deshaun Watson is accused of and the severity of the accusations on this side, which are physical and damaging to human beings and then you put Kaepernick on this side, who didn’t harm anybody physically. One gets the biggest contract in the history of football and the other is gone. So what are the priorities, and how do the issues play themselves out?
Clearly they’re not worried about the optics.
TW: Right, exactly.
RH: No, business is a-booming.
What do you guys think would’ve been the reaction if someone like Tom Brady took a knee over the same issue?
RH: It would not be the same, but I do not think it would be as favorable as if somebody in the NBA did. Because I actually really do believe that no one player in football is above the brand, whereas in basketball they’re all their own brands that prop up the brand of basketball in the NBA. But I want to be clear that if he did it, it would be more favorable, no question about it.
He’d still be starting.
RH: Yeah, that’s for sure. Yeah, hundred percent.
TW: I’d have to agree with that.
I know Kaepernick’s been quite…Where do you think he goes from here? Do you think ever think he’ll be involved in the NFL again? Do you think people’s perception of him will change?
RH: Well, I think it’ll definitely change. I think you’ve already seen it. Like Tommy keeps pointing out George Floyd, I feel like that made a lot of people, not everybody and certainly not enough, but a lot of people go “oh, ok.” And obviously it’s horrible that it took that. So, I do think that his legacy is being defined, and in the end when, whatever the end may be, I don’t know… but when we get enough distance, I think the film does a good job of saying that he’ll be in that Muhammad Ali stratosphere…he’ll be mentioned in that group. I do not think he’ll be involved in the NFL again though.
Even as a broadcaster?
RH: Nope, I don’t think so.
TW: No.
RH: I think the NFL told us where they stood on this issue from day one, and everything else after that was just noise, that’s my opinion. I do not think that he was ever going to get back in the league, and I don’t think that he ever will.
TW: I agree with Ross, I don’t think it ever happens again.
RH: And it’s got nothing to do with football, because I watch nine hours of football every Sunday… [there’s] some bums out there playing quarterback. So…we’re not talking about football right now, we’re talking about something else.
But now we’re so far removed, and he hasn’t played in the NFL since 2016, it’d be hard to step back in to that game speed when you’re having a real x’s and o’s conversation. But two years afterwards, we could go start looking at the rosters, this is not that hard to figure this out… I think it’s better that he doesn’t, just because I think that adds to the legacy part of it.
TW: I think what happens is when people start talking about the football aspect, they’ll start forgetting about the activism aspect, so that’s my own personal feeling about it. I would also add to what Ross was saying…it’s like you know, we in America want change to happen fast, but it doesn’t happen fast. And especially doesn’t happen fast when it comes to race and racism in this country. And so, the people who have been active and gone out of their way to try figure out ways to make change happen in this country, it’s taken awhile for us as a society to recognize what their activism has meant to the country and to change. And change itself has also taken a long time on each one of these iterations. And so what it really means is that this thing, this boat moves slowly… and certainly Kaepernick will have a much deeper legacy than he does now…but it’s gonna take time.
Even Muhammad Ali, he wasn’t universally loved at the time when he was playing.
TW: Just the opposite, in fact.
He went to prison, he was polarizing, and now they call him “the greatest”.
RH: When I compare, I’m not going to get in to the level of importance and all that…the way I compare them is that they both put what they loved on the line…and, you know, Muhammad Ali did it outwardly, like he knew he was doing that. I’m not convinced Kaepernick, I don’t think anybody thought he’d be out of the league, while it was happening. Again, we go back to the quarterback piece of this, when the Niners’ season ended in 2016 and he was no longer gonna be with the Niners, and you look at who was playing quarterback that year that he wasn’t in, you would’ve never thought that he wasn’t going to be in the league. And so, I think that piece of it is retroactive, where it’s like “oh yeah he never got picked up, here’s why, now we understand it…” In the moment it felt like well there’s no way, someone’s gotta sign him. I’m not really even convinced thirty people are any good at playing quarterback on earth, he’s certainly one of them. So, what are we doing here? I think there’s a line in the film that says: “not every team was necessarily trying to get better at the quarterback position.” Because Kaepernick would’ve been on the roster.
TW: As Steve Weiss says, which I completely agree with…” if you tread on the flag, the backlash is gonna be severe.” And specifically to the fact that the relationship between the NFL and the various arms of the military is so powerful and strong, it even that much more so means that. So I was always fearful of whether he’d play or not based on that.
RH: And it’s interesting…when we talk about this story and we think “alright he didn’t play, he got blackballed, he protested the anthem…” its like, wait a minute, hold on a second, he didn’t protest the anthem. That is part of our vernacular now, that it just got said so much…” Someone should teach a media class on this Kaepernick story–completely putting the issues aside and just teach how important the way you word things is in the media. Because he never protested the anthem or the flag. Even the supporters in defending him would say things and phrase it in that way, and it just became such a part of how we talk about it, that it just became this accepted thing. And even the people who would defend him would be like “he’s protesting the anthem for issues…”—but he’s not. He’s protesting “the” issues. That’s just the platform, the anthem.
TW: He’s using the anthem as his right as an American citizen, and that’s kind of how it should’ve been parsed, because that’s what it is. The actions are such that he’s been given the right to do that based on who we are as Americans, what we are as Americans. But he got turned into this other thing and, essentially, you know… in the times that we live in…where issues have been turned into whatever people wanna make them about, specifically more now than ever in the Donald Trump era, right? Create this notion, run wild with it.
Fake news…
RH: And in the Kaepernick case, we spent so much time talking about protesting the anthem, you know…the headlines, the ticker at the bottom of espn, the anthem watch…you know they started playing it before—they never showed the anthem on tv for the most time. Now they’re doing it every week to see if Kaepernick is gonna kneel or not. This is the conversation that we’re having, not the conversation he was trying to get us to have. We spent so much time talking about that, and we wasted time not talking about what he was trying to get us to talk about. And that includes his supporters also.
TW: People have forgotten completely 100 percent that teams didn’t even come out for the anthem, they stayed in the locker room.
RH: And there’s no rule, this isn’t even a rule! It’s a rule in the NBA, but it’s not a rule in the NFL.
TW: Stayed in the locker room. Teams never even came out until after the anthem was sung…so how is this suddenly…certainly, you know, September 11th changed the vernacular on that part of it, but that’s an interesting…how we treat the anthem… that’s a whole other documentary, which we just didn’t have the time to dive into. Because you can go on and on on that subject, as we have (chuckles).
You guys working on anything together or solo? What do you guys got coming up?
TW: Kinda secret. Top secret.
RH: Yeah, we got stuff.
TW: We are working on things together, and we enjoy working together, so it’s a plus…when you can bring two minds together.
Anees Aref is a writer on film, history, and politics based in the Los Angeles area who has published abroad as well as in the United States.