This weekend, Colin Kaepernick practiced in front of NFL scouts. One version of the practice story is that the ball seemed to float out of his hands as if carried by pigeon and dropped off to his pro athlete friends for short and long yardage. The more complicated story is that Kaepernick dismissed the heavily anticipated practice quickly arranged by the NFL and assembled his own dozens of miles away at a high school practice field. Donning the words “Kunta Kinte” on his all black outfit and an afro that moves as freely as he did in the virtual pocket, he showed with ease that he was ready to re-join a league that implicitly blackballed him from competing for the last two years. Contrary to some sportscasters’ opinions, his social justice interests sit alongside his football interests, which is why he has garnered attention for both. With an escalation in quarterback injuries this season, Kap seems a natural choice who still has enough of an arm to fit into a willing system.

But he openly questioned the overarching system and was blackballed for doing so.

To casual observers, Kaepernick’s story may have felt like just another instance of the pitfalls of not falling in line with the Shield. For others, the story of an ostensible star speaking up about systemic change in a profession that benefits from the proliferation of that exploitation rings a 2000-pound bell in us. When we take a longitudinal approach to discussing teachers of color – specifically Black teachers – in our country’s educational history, we see the oscillation of an ideological pendulum.

Should teachers of color only teach children of color, white students, or any and all? If so, what’s their pedagogy look like when they face children that were them? Do they teach them socialism, the customs of African nations, and the interpersonal skills necessary to survive in a country not built for them? Or do they teach them to put a test score above their self-care, personal responsibility at the expense of their community, and the version of respectability that centers billionaires and heads of megachurches?

What does it mean to be culturally responsive to a community where the mayor, the sheriff, the principal spout white supremacist talking points? Where the head of the school holds an anti-black sentiment even when they’re ostensibly a person of color? When the superintendent “heard about the thing you did” and uses smoke-and-mirror policies to disguise their jealousy over perceived power struggle? Does Martin Luther King Jr.’s fear of “integrating into a burning house” extend to underresourced schools and, if so, how many are willing and able to fight that fire?

If they’re teaching anything outside of the prescribed curricula, what are their prospects? If, according to research, teachers of color are leaving faster than their white counterparts, who replaces them? What happens to systems that refuse to cultivate the justice dreams of young people who wanted to serve in the spaces from whence they came? Do students win from seeing elder versions of themselves pushed out through wayward rubrics, petty post-observations, and generational poverty?

What happens when people scream “tenure” at teachers who, even with due process, can still feel shoved out because they uttered the word “anti-racism” and acted upon it in their own school building?

What happens to the educators who, through fortune and resilience, stay in systems antithetical to their core? What happens when the kids ask if they’re going to be back to teach them the next year and you can’t be 100% sure? What happens when sympathy isn’t granted to them? What happens when they’re treated not as professional human beings, but as automatons? Even by those who they believed they’ve helped? What happens to their peers’ unconsciousness when they observe this happening to them?

To you? To me?

Certainly, Kaepernick has more prospects than the average teacher of color and / or pro athlete. As a symbol for racial justice, he still collects a Nike check and any number of honors and awards from large organizations for his work. Teachers of color generally don’t get hired at more well-to-do schools once they’ve left the classroom, and often get pushed to other perilous spaces like academia or the non-profit sector. Yet, it’s worth recognizing that, if such a symbol is useful for discussing the margins of this profession we call a “calling,” then we can uproot the elements of our profession that keep our most talented and versatile professionals from getting pushed out. It’ll take a monumental shift in public sentiment, a broad coalition of educators of many stripes, and, yes, the understanding that we need to appreciate a broader skill set than simply addressing the standards on a lesson plan.

Put us in the game before we make our own.

photo c/o