You should’ve been a Beyoncé: Advice for Colin Kaepernick

Dear Colin Kaepernick:

In 2016, as the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, you decided to protest racism, police brutality, and racial inequality. It does not appear to have gone well for you. You’re jobless at the moment, and a lot of people think they know why.

I have a few (albeit belated) words of advice.

Super Bowl L (50)

It’s just plain adorable that the NFL refers to this as Coldplay’s Halftime Show.

Super Bowl 50 was Beyoncé’s second Super Bowl, her first being in 2013. On February 7, 2016, just seven months before you would shock the sports world with your silent protest, Beyoncé did one out loud. While the world was crying out about the unjust deaths of people whose names blend together over time, mononymously powerful Beyoncé made a statement about it.

She and her dancers swept Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, wearing black outfits bedecked with gold straps, signifying the The Black Panthers, a group dedicated to the militant self-defense of minorities against the U.S. government.

• It was not an accident that her hit single released a day before was titled Formation. 
• It was not an accident that this came 50 years after the formation of The Black Panthers.
• It’s not an accident that this was the same year of Lemonade, a seminal work in which she unequivocally states the trials, the challenges, but most importantly, the ecstasy of being black and proud of it.
• It was not an accident that this took place in a year that, according to Mapping The Violence, oversaw over 300 black deaths at the hands of police.

Beyoncé did not stumble into that outfit, but wore it deliberately, as a badge of pride, as a voice that could be heard. She, like you, had something to say, and an avenue through which to say it.

Unfortunately, unlike you, she is Beyoncé.

The Division

Photo Credit: Ana y María Quintana y González (goo.gl/Sq3PrL)

After that Super Bowl, people were angry with Beyoncé, too. People left hateful messages on her videos and disavowed the NFL, or committed to boycotting her music. SNL even made a spoof of the ire she had ruthlessly drawn from white America. But she is still worth $350 million, and you don’t have a job.

A friend once told me:

“I think if he were 10 percent better, he could’ve gotten away with it.”

I think she’s right. That is due to the division.

The division binds you and the people who look like you. The division is the line between the haves and the have nots, and there is no middle ground. Either you are Beyoncé, or you should shut up and play. Speaking your mind is for the transcendent among us, the Oprahs, the Obamas, the Beyoncés. It is not for you.

It doesn’t matter that, at age 25, you led the 49ers to a Super Bowl, the highest achievement in your field. It doesn’t matter that you lost that game by only 3 points. It doesn’t matter that you are a better quarterback than Tim Tebow, a fellow Christian and quarterback lavishly praised for his defense of his values.

Because the division is real, and people like you are not allowed to not be exceptional. You are not Peyton Manning. Few are. But you are not permitted not to be.

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on immigration at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, Nev., Nov. 21, 2014. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

This division is wholly yours. There is no use looking out to the world for examples, because the requirement of excellence does not apply to them. Some will get jobs with no experience, or may even be chosen to lead the most powerful country on earth.

This is not you, and it never will be.

This is why the victims of police brutality are praised for their academic excellence. This is why they are lauded as “good fathers.” This is why their virtues are extolled, to highlight the extent of what was taken from the world with their passing.

I don’t know if you knew about the division when you knelt, if you didn’t know the cost, or how to avoid it. I don’t know if you knew that excellence is the price you pay for the justification of your right to be. If you didn’t know that you had to be more to avoid destruction.

Or, perhaps you knew, and you did it anyway, because some things can’t wait.

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