They know you just want to watch the games, and that is precisely why the heavy-handed DEI train in the NFL is not going away. Be it the workplace, a church, or an entertainment venue, the diversity, equity, and inclusion apparatus is designed to be foisted on a captive audience. And when it comes to pro football, Americans can’t get enough, no matter how much the propaganda encroaches on the field of play.
On February 3, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell defiantly defended the league’s commitment to “diversity” across the entire spectrum of its multi-billion-dollar operations. That includes the long-controversial Rooney Rule, which, since 2003, has mandated that a minority candidate be interviewed for all team coaching and key front-office positions.
“Our policies have been designed to be well within the law, well within the practice,” Goodell asserted. “There are no quotas in our system. This is about opening that funnel and bringing the best talent into the NFL.”
Woke Bumper-Sticker Drivel in the End Zones
For the fans, it means constant unwanted exposure to inanities like the scrapping of the iconic Washington Redskins name in 2020 and its eventual adoption of the moniker the Commanders. And in the stadiums, the backs of end zones are marked with “End Racism” sloganeering.
The latter campaign made its way into the news headlines in the run-up to the Super Bowl. Big-box media accounts have attempted to make the fact that the NFL will not be using its “End Racism” stamp on end zones for the Big Game as somehow meaningful in the wake of Republican President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. He will be attending the event.
Never mind that the phrases replacing it are every bit as tedious in expressing soulless progressive mush. “Choose Love” and “It Takes All Of Us” will decorate the two ends of the field at the New Orleans Superdome. Those phrases might appear insipid and dull, but maybe they’re supposed to be that way.
NFL: Seeing Whites as Leaders Keeps Black Coaches Down
Do American football fans truly understand how committed the NFL is to the worst radical excesses of the race-obsessed DEI agenda? Dr. C. Keith Harrison is a black professor at the University of Central Florida. He headed up the NFL’s official 2023 Diversity & Inclusion Report.
A “statement” from Harrison is featured near the top of the report. Its language is the epitome of what one might expect from a credentialed member of leftist-dominated US academia. It is also peppered with a jarring amount of undisguised grievance against white males.
Harrison emphasizes that “scholars” who produced a research article for the American Journal of Sociology propose that “racial disparity in organizational leadership representation will persist until valuative bias favoring White men ceases to influence advancement from the lower-level positions where most careers begin.”
He then cites another “empirical article.” This one is by Emory University professor Melissa Williams “and colleagues,” titled “Looking the Part: Stereotypicality in Appearance Among White Professionals Predicts Leadership Attainment and Perceived Leadership Suitability.”
Reminder: this is part of the official NFL Diversity Report for 2023.
“Building on research showing that people hold an image of the ideal leader as a White person, we propose that looking more typically White may facilitate leadership attainment,” Williams and her colleagues wrote. “Furthermore, within race, stereotypicality positively predicted occupying a leadership head-coach role among White professionals (and negatively predicted a head-coach role among Black professionals).”
Williams, who is white, has made group obsession into a career. She does not see individuals. Her “Areas of Expertise,” as listed in her Emory bio, include “Diversity & Inclusion,” “Social Psychology,” and “Power & Leadership.” “Professor Williams studies the intersection between social identities (gender, race, stigma, or national culture) and workplace hierarchies,” the bio reads.
Strangely, NFL diversity point man Harrison fails to mention he is a co-author of the Williams report, which he quotes.
It is essential for Americans to understand what all this means. They are being conditioned to accept a bizarrely contrived projection of a new racial model of leadership when they watch NFL games. “Perceived suitability” must be changed. It’s sports as social engineering, and you are the target.
That the elimination of any notion of meritocracy gravely damages the standing of qualified black coaches is of no importance to the NFL-anointed radicals pushing this racially loaded agenda. By stripping merit from the equation, DEI ultimately lets down the very people it claims to champion.