NFL
By: Zachary Draves
The NFL itself has fumbled the ball more times than Brett Favre did in his whole career, which is saying something, particularly on the issue of race.
This is the same league that continues to outlaw Colin Kaepernick while using all kinds of smoke and mirrors to preach about their supposed commitment to social justice.
But now they have been exposed yet again for the frauds they are and for all intense of purposes this should be the final nail in their coffin.
The NFL came out to say that they were ending their practice of “race norming” which was a racialized mechanism used to determine who could tap into the current $1 billion settlement afforded to former players who have traumatic brain injuries.
It ultimately determined that some black players weren’t eligible because the league pre-supposed that they were of “low cognitive function”.
If that isn’t systemic racism I don’t know what is.
The practice of race norming is prevalent in the field of medicine and the wider health care system and this case speaks to the larger problem of how doctors and health care providers treat patients differently based on racial stereotypes.
A 2017 study published in the Journal for Social Psychology and cited by Arizona State University’s Global Sports Matters found that racial bias is frequent in the medical treatment of NCAA athletes. https://globalsportmatters.com/health/2019/03/20/black-athletes-face-bias-when-seeking-medical-care/. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224545.2017.1409188?journalCode=vsoc20.
The study showed that medical staff perceived black athletes to feel less pain than white athletes.
This notion that black athletes are superhuman and “natural athletes” who are incapable of feeling any sort of physical or emotional agony permeates throughout our cultural landscape in the form of various media representations which ultimately result in medical professionals being grossly ill-prepared and therefore we have rampant racial inequities.
Anyone who thinks that the NFL was on the right side of history after the summer of 2020 is completely oblivious to reality.
They were never on the right side of history even after they pledged around $250 million to be given to various organizations and causes aimed at racial and social justice over the next ten years.
In other words, the largely white ownership class is saying that it is the responsibility of the overwhelming black players to stop the injustices being inflicted upon them and their communities.
Talk about elite white privilege.
This further illustrates that this is a league that cannot be trusted and that they don’t give a damn about black lives on and off the field.
Until they do some very hard soul searching, clean up their act, and do right by the players past and present, they will have their rude awakening in one way or another.
I think Barry Bonds said it best “when your closets’ clean, then come clean somebody else’s but clean yours first.”
