“When we adopted him, I bought some books from the library on raising children from another race, but what it all came down to was common sense more than anything,” Teresa said then. “You want him to feel really good about the race he is. You’re not trying to make him white.”

In junior high school, Teresa drove Colin an hour to Modesto to have his hair corn-rowed like Allen Iverson. From the beginning, they taught him to embrace his heritage.

“I remember very well, he was just a couple years old, him putting his arm next to mine and saying, ‘Look, I’m brown! How come I’m brown?’” Teresa recalled. “And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s not fair, you’ve got that pretty brown color, and look at me, Mom looks like paste! You look great.’ And he would just beam.”

…In the end, for the kid from Turlock, the words and guidance from his parents who so prepared him for life in the spotlight as a black athlete, compelled him to risk his livelihood for what he believed was the truth—that a country which calls itself free has a great deal of unimpeded racial inequality.

Francis Scott Key wrote about the land that breeds this sort of citizen: The home of the brave.

Colin Kaepernick sits for national anthem at 49ers game | The MMQB with Peter King

hmmmm