Of the NFL’s 1,696 players, almost 1,200 are black. If the league mirrored American demographics—blacks are about 12.4 percent of the population—fewer than 215 players would be black. As well, almost 20 percent of the general managers are black, as French admits.
Ignoring the lawsuit’s anecdotal claims and focusing on other figures shows that blacks, relative to their share of the population, are overrepresented in most coaching and management jobs
Now let’s look at some data with which French is surely familiar. Since 2000, cops have arrested NFL players—again 70 percent of whom are black—more than 1000 times. That’s one arrest a week every week for 20 years. This year already, cops have arrested seven black NFL stars [NFL player arrests database: Records since 2000, USA Today.
7 comments
What David French said: "The statistical evidence demonstrates extraordinary underrepresentation of Black coaches and executives. While 70 percent of NFL players are Black, only one out of 32 teams employs a Black head coach; six out of 32 teams employ a Black general manager."
So he is talking about proportion in the NFL! Not compared to the general population.
Even had all this drivel be factual, here’s a thing: I’m not going to judge the general population by how NFL players behave, one way or another, because it has no fucking connection.
Playing sports is how most black youth get through school. School sports are insanely exploitative and the education that’s promised as their payment is often deliberately designed to be an absolute joke to keep them playing without adequate compensation. White students tend to have much better prospects with lending institutions being much more amicable and thus have less inclination to such a raw deal. After school seeing businesses constantly turn up their noses at their resume (either assuming everything was all “affirmative action” and the grades were unearned or knowing what a joke the education athletes receive is and holding that against the student as an act of fraud and a moral failing rather than the institution) makes getting scouted to play professionally not just an attractive option but really the only viable one if they want to keep a roof over their heads. So black athletes tend not to be in the strongest position to negotiate contracts which is how team owners like it. Again, white students tend not to have this problem and white athletes are considered to quite simply have more to offer and leverage. Moreover their celebrity - partially because of their rarity - will simply be much better received. Consider how well Tom Brady (net worth 200 million) is regarded compared to Colin Kaepernick (net worth 20 million) and the difference of controversy between the two of them kneeling for different reasons on the field. One to pray, celebrated. One to protest violence, vilified. Guess which one was caught cheating? It’s not the one the US Senate stepped in to essentially strike from being discussed in public or recorded in history.
Coaches on the other hand rake in money hand over fist at both the student and professional levels. At the student level where athletes are forbidden to accept so much as a sandwich or a ride to practice if it can be seen as leveraging their athletic performance the coaches are the ones who license out the athletes’ images and collect royalties. I stopped playing sports video games altogether because of this practice. A job that is inherently more lucrative with no connection to personal performance… a job that exists purely on exploitation of a deliberately hamstringed lower class that just happens to be further hampered due to perceptions of race… a job whose success is based less on the leadership of the position and almost entirely on the performance of those under them… a job where open flagrant verbal insults of the players is not just tolerated but the norm… and of course it’s overwhelmingly white.
@Skide #113537
Yeah and considering his “one arrest a week for twenty years” statistic he cites (trying to imply it’s all violent felonies rather than drunk and disorderly conduct, DUI, drug possession, tax evasion, or just an absolute nonsense charge like “manner of walking in the roadway” etc. all but the last of which is basically considered to be just what rich assholes do with their time with varying levels of consequence) if taken to be representative of race should be considered significant I’d love to see him justify what it says when there’s a mass shooting a week in America with a white perpetrator. Or the number of Republicans outed as not just adulterers but outright sexual predators in rapid succession… to no consequences whatsoever.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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