ABC’s ‘Blackish’ Celebrates Colin Kaepernick as Civil Rights Leader

ABC’s ‘Blackish’ Celebrates Colin Kaepernick as Civil Rights Leader

ABC’s comedy Blackish is known for taking on the issue of racism, but Tuesday’s episode was particularly heavy on the topic, celebrating controversial former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a hero and painting white men as ignorant racists who need to be saved from themselves.

In the episode, “Stand up, Fall Down,” main character Dre (Anthony Anderson) decides to take his teenage son Andre "Junior" (Marcus Scribner) to work with him as an intern.

While there, Andre witnesses Dre’s white coworkers and boss, who are usually painted as racially insensitive, suggesting racist ideas for a restaurant ad campaign they’re working on.

Umm, Kaepernick? The man who compares police officers with pigs and a “run-away slave patrol.” The man who celebrates former Communist dictator Fidel Castro? The man who started the NFL Anthem protests saying, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” He’s hardly someone I’d think of as a hero for black civil rights, like the great Martin Luther King, Jr. or Rosa Parks.

At the end of the episode, the white male boss and coworkers go with their racist pitch to the client, which ends up being rightly rejected. That, in turn, leads the boss, Leslie, to sheepishly apologize to Dre and tell him they need him back in the room to work on future campaigns, just as Dre is preparing to quit over the incident.

“Okay, because I have some thoughts." Dre responds, "I can't be my best when I'm wasting my energy saving you guys from yourselves. Okay? You're gonna need to step up and do better.”

Blackish, you're gonna need to step up and do better than praising Colin Kaepernick as some kind of hero.