As Roger Goodell, the league’s longtime commissioner, explained in a video released Friday, “we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest.”
And now that a solid, oh, 76% of Americans polled say they agree that “racial and ethnic discrimination is a big problem in the United States,” and a majority say they support the Black Lives Matter movement, and now that hundreds of thousands of citizens have taken to the streets to protest police brutality against African-Americans, and now that even Grandma and Grandpa seem suddenly woke, the NFL wants you to know how very sorry it is.
No, it’s sorry because — four years after former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick first dared quietly take a knee during the playing of the National Anthem — Donald Trump’s approval ratings are dropping and suddenly, for lots of white people, it’s no longer acceptable to banish players for the crime of peacefully protesting societal wrongs.
Although nearly 70% of the NFL’s players are African American, a paltry three head coaches are black —and this offseason, none of the five vacancies were filled by black men.
The NFL can apologize and apologize and apologize some more, but until it actually starts hiring large numbers of African American coaches and executives and until it acknowledges that Colin Kaepernick was deliberately blackballed and until it stands up to the bully in the White House the next time he goes on one of his racially charged Twitter rants, we can only see the league for what it is.
