NFL’s Hate Practices Help Explain Why It’s So Hard To End US Racism
If you’ve watched any NFL football games the past couple of seasons, you’ve no doubt noticed the “End Racism” signs painted into the end-zone turfs of each field.
It may to many seem a promising step toward meaningful social change that an organization with such cultural visibility and reach and such a powerful mouthpiece within the dominant culture should be promoting social justice and racial equality, particularly at a time when the White Supremacist elements of American society are rearing their ugly heads so brazenly and in seemingly full force.
And, “Wow,” we might think, look at the NFL giving the prominent Super Bowl stage to such powerful Black voices as Kendrick Lamar, Mary J. Blige, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg.
And yet, I think we need to recognize an insidious and underlying cultural and political dynamic operative here that actually works to perpetuate and more deeply entrench racism in America.
For sure, the NFL has taken heat for some heat for the most blatant hypocrisy this end-zone signage exposes, especially during the AFC Championship game when the controversial Kansas City Chiefs logo, a flagrant racist use of Native American iconography, so brazenly juxtaposed to the “End Racism” signage.
We need to see the dynamic as more than hypocrisy though. Hypocrisy tends to refer to the practice of expressing two contradictory points of view or acting in contradiction with one’s stated point of view.
What the NFL is up to, however, I would suggest, is actually a concerted and common practice in America of turning social justice into a commodity in a way that enables the continuation of practices that perpetuate and intensify injustices and that masks the deep commitment to entrenching the very injustices being targeted.
The NFL’s profound commitment to racism, homophobia, and sexism was exposed — as was the dynamic I’m talking about — in all its naked ugliness and brutality even after Commissioner Roger Goodell announced the “social justice” initiative of the end-zone signs in September 2020.
In October 2021, for example, the NFL settled a lawsuit regarding the practice of race norming with former Black players Najeh Davenport…
