Former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick appeared alongside journalist Jemele Hill on Saturday night at the National Black Footwear Forum in Detroit, Michigan, for a conversation centered on race, his personal history and his upcoming memoir, “The Perilous Fight.” The event did not allow audience questions.
During the discussion, Hill raised a story from Kaepernick’s memoir describing his mother’s reaction to the women he dated as a teenager and, later, her suggestion that he pursue a relationship with pop star Taylor Swift.
According to a copy of the book, Kaepernick wrote that as a teenager he dated a girl named Crystal, who is Black, and felt comfortable and understood in her family’s home. He took Crystal to a homecoming dance, but when the formal photo from that night came back, his mother put it away in a drawer.
Kaepernick wrote that his mother later encouraged him to ask a white girl named Lindsay, the daughter of one of her friends, to the next formal dance. When that photo arrived, he wrote, his mother displayed it prominently on the wall.
“In her mind, Crystal was just a phase. Lindsay was the kind of girl I should want,” Kaepernick wrote, adding that he felt his mother did not see who he really was.
Years later, after he had reached the NFL, Kaepernick wrote that his mother suggested he ask out Taylor Swift, telling him the two would be “perfect together.” Kaepernick wrote that Swift “was not my type,” noting that Crystal had been an athlete who played basketball and ran track, which made it difficult for the two of them to spend time together during her season.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Kaepernick said his parents, who are white, did not understand or support his “blackness” while he was growing up, and that they did not initially support his decision to kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice.
Hill, who moderated the discussion, opened by attributing Kaepernick’s decline in on-field performance late in his career to injuries and suggested the Atlanta Falcons consider signing him as a quarterback for the 2026 season.
