An Open Letter to Colin Kaepernick

Jashvina Shah
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

Dear Colin Kaepernick,

I can’t imagine what you’ve sacrificed. It’s easy for people to look at you behind the safety of the lack of color in their skin and sneer at you and your choices, but I know.

Some things you go through I can never imagine. Some I can. Some things I go through you can never imagine. But though there are some differences, there is enough in common for me to see a little part of what you’ve given up, because I know too.

I know what it means to realize saying something, or doing something, no matter how peaceful it can be, still pushes you to the outside. I know how others will speak ill of you, I know how they will threaten you, I know how they will try to expunge you from the space you love.

I’ve always known, which is why for years I cowered at the thought of saying anything in hockey, even if it was “just” exposing people who’d been racist or had sexually harassed me. I was afraid of the consequences because I knew it meant I wouldn’t have a place in hockey anymore.

This year I finally decided it was enough and I would not be complicit in letting hockey keep its racist, sexist and homophobic ideals. So I said many things. Too many things to name, because they spilled from years of reporting and pain and close calls with danger. And the day after I said those things I cried in the fur of our dog because I knew that was it, that I would be blacklisted from hockey.

So some of it I do understand.

Each day I wake up I want to take a step back because sometimes I get tired of fighting for something that I feel will never change. I’m still afraid of being pushed to the outside and of being unwelcome (although at this point, I don’t know why.)

But mostly I’m crushed that I know I can never have the thing I loved that I’ve been chasing for over a decade, that I’ve given the prime years of my life for. How many hours have I spent on the road for no money, at rinks, sitting at my computer? Too many. Too much love.

Most people roll their eyes at this, just like they roll their eyes at America’s racism problem, its homophobia, its sexism and its xenophobia. For those people, it’s easier to pretend the realities of unjust practices don’t exist rather than confronting it as a part of our nation’s identity and acknowledge their own part in it.

But as a minority, you’re already stepping in spaces you aren’t welcome. That one I learned early on. And I’ve kept learning, more intensely, as I’ve grown older. People will gladly take my clothes, my health remedies, my yoga, but they will never take the people who come with it. They will always look at me from the color of my skin and say, “she’s brown, what does she know about hockey?” or, “Where are from? No, where are your parents from?” They’ll make jokes about not speaking English. And then they’ll look at the woman in me and distill me down to my looks to determine if they want me around. And if they do, it’s only to look at me. Not to listen to me. Not to acknowledge that I have a very deep understanding of the sport I cover, and that I’m intelligent, and that I’m strong.

To them I’ll never belong there anyway.

And once minorities start to speak, when they start to stand up for themselves, they are shunned and barred. In hockey especially, people who speak out are never welcome. You’re not meant to go against the team identity, or how the sport feels as a whole. Everyone in hockey is nice on the surface, so what does it matter if they use the n-word, or they don’t like members of the LGBTQIA community, or if they think anyone with brown skin is “illegal.”

It’s true that once you say these things people will brand you as “not one of us” or “not a team player.” Because they don’t want to see. And they want any recognition of difficulties as far away from their eyesight as possible. So they will throw you out too if you can.

And I miss hockey so much. I miss being welcome in this space, I miss the road trips. I miss the community I was supposed to have. I miss the small pieces of laughter that would lift me. I miss it being my home. There isn’t a day that passes where that longing doesn’t try to sever my soul.

So part of it I do understand.

And the only reason I won’t give up, I won’t look away and I won’t stop, is because I see you up there. I see the commitment you’ve made and your resolve to continue, even though you’ve been taken away from the thing you loved so much.

I’m just one person, but I know I’m not the only one.

So thank you.

Jashvina Shah

Written by

Formerly a Princeton hockey reporter of three years and now a journalist for hire. Current B1G hockey and CWHL reporter. BU 13 http://www.jashvinashah.com/