Last updated on June 9th, 2021 at 10:27 am
As everyone knows, the National Football League is woke. It all started back in 2003 when the NFL adopted the Rooney Rule, which promotes race-based and sex-based hiring. According to the rule (as it currently exists), at least one minority (and in some cases two) must be interviewed for senior coaching and management positions and at least one woman must be interviewed for front office positions. Hiring based on race and sex, not competence or character, is what the rule cares about.
Wokeness and identity politics gained greater prominence in the NFL in 2016 when quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the playing of the national anthem to protest “racist” police officers “disproportionately” shooting black men in America; a claim which is demonstrably false. Indeed, the statistics go the other way: while being only 6% of the population, black men are responsible for 42% of police officer killings. But truth did not matter. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell defended Kaepernick’s actions, and most players and even some coaches took a knee during the playing of the national anthem to show solidarity with Kaepernick and his false claims of racism. Then in early 2020, when it was determined that the Rooney rule was not producing enough minority hires, the NFL expanded the rule to require that more minorities be interviewed for leadership positions.
When the George Floyd riots went rampant in the summer of 2020, wokeness went into overdrive at the NFL head office. First, the league agreed to donate $250 million over 10 years “to combat systemic racism” in the United States. Then, because the Rooney rule was still not achieving the right racial results, the NFL agreed to offer compensatory draft picks to teams that develop minority staff members and then lose them to higher positions with other teams.
It would appear that the NFL is firmly committed to identity politics and pushing Critical Race Theory ideology which holds that whites are systemic oppressors.
But, is it?
Enter, Eugene Chung; a Korean-American who recently interviewed for a coaching position with an NFL team (He won’t disclose what team it is or release any names, to protect the identities of others). He hoped his resume, which included being a former offensive lineman and later an assistant coach of a winning Super Bowl team, would qualify him for the position. His hopes, however, were sadly misplaced. Why? Because Chung was not the right race. As one of the interviewers bluntly told him during the interview, he was “not the right minority” that the league was trying to hire. Indeed, this attitude appeared to a normal part of doing business in the NFL. As Chung stated: “I really don’t think [the person] was saying it in a discriminatory or malicious way; it was matter-of-fact.”
So a league that is committed to openly hiring based on race and believes that America is a racist nation openly discriminates against a racial minority because he is the wrong type of racial minority? Has the world been turned upside down? And another question looms large regarding the hypocrisy of the NFL: if the NFL is truly committed to racial diversity, one might ask what it is doing to combat the lack of diversity among its players. Indeed, despite being just 6% of the population, blacks are almost 70% of the players in the NFL. What is the NFL doing to recruit, hire, and train more Asians and whites, who are underrepresented among players and make up 66% of the population in America? Of does the NFL believe that it is ok that Asians and whites are glaringly underrepresented in the league? To avoid all this craziness and to support the bedrock principle that character and competence are what people should be judged on, it is too much to ask the NFL to just concentrate on hiring the best people for jobs? Eugene Chung would clearly know how to answer that question.
