10 years after taking a knee, Colin Kaepernick is still waging a 'Perilous Fight'

Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick was adopted as a baby into a white family, in a town that was almost entirely white. He was 8 when a group of older boys called him the n-word and tried to tie him to a tree — an incident he never mentioned to his parents.

"Instinctively, as a Black boy, I didn't think they would believe me," Kaepernick says. "I went [home] and got cleaned up, came downstairs, and went about the day like nothing had happened. But it was a moment that also shaped and defined me."

For Kaepernick, football became a space for him to understand his Blackness. He found support in his fellow teammates and their mothers, who shared their own experiences with racism and advised him on how to navigate situations involving the police. He went on to play college football for the University of Nevada, Reno.