African Americans are a hybrid people, he is nowhere near the first black man of mixed ancestry to protest against racism.

There is nothing unusual in this. There is no tension, no hypocrisy, no contradiction, between [Colin] Kaepernick being a black person of unusual status, fame, and financial success and his demand that the United States treat black people equally. African Americans are a hybrid people, he is nowhere near the first black man of mixed ancestry to protest against racism. Du Bois had white ancestors, Frederick Douglass believed that his father was the white man who owned his body, Malcolm X, with his red hair and light skin, was asked by a student why he identified as black upon his visit to Ghana. There is also the current president of the United States.

Adam Serwer, “Colin Kaepernick’s True Sin,” The Atlantic, August 30, 2016. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/08/kaepernicks-true-sin/498122/.

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