One of the great ironies of the woke, indolent nature of our corporate press is they continue to push narratives that harm the individuals they supposedly want to help. The Scientific American (which also thinks telling black women to lose weight is racist) on Friday published a piece trashing a game played by mostly black men as fundamentally discriminatory in response to the tragic injury suffered by Damar Hamlin last Monday night.
The author of this piece, Tracie Canada, fancies herself an expert on football due to her background as a “cultural anthropologist.” What she offers instead, however, are the rantings of an educated idiot.
“As a cultural anthropologist, I’ve spent the last decade learning how Black college football players navigate the exploitation, racism, and anti-Blackness that are fundamental to its current system. I know it’s not new to highlight the inherent violence of American football.”
These black college football players are “exploited” by the institutions of higher learning giving them free athletic scholarships and now allowing them to profit off their name, image, and likeness (NIL). Without this system in place, many of these young black men would never get to experience college and earn money off the game in the first place.
Canada goes on to bemoan the inherent violence characterizing the game of football. She also rips fans and others invested in football for downplaying and rationalizing the inevitable injuries that occur:
“This sport requires exceptional athletes, who are otherwise ordinary men, to perform extraordinary feats on the field. We liken these men to gladiators and warriors. The leagues, organizations, teams, coaches, spectators, and fans who benefit from their performance expect them to tough it out when they get hurt and applaud them when they play through these injuries.”
“Football is a spectacle where excessive violence is mundane because hits that cause injuries are a constant occurrence, and spectators are desensitized to it. Consumers of the sport assume players will withstand any bodily affront, so they are shocked when a player’s physical limits are exceeded, often on very public stages.”
“People with a vested interest in professional football rationalize excessive violence in this structured space, as well as the ones that encompass college, high school, and peewee play, all because they assume that rules, equipment, and regulations exist to prevent death. But this is false protection.
This is actually fair criticism because the vast majority of spectators have never strapped on a helmet and have no clue what it’s like to get flattened by a 250 lb. linebacker. While the game’s executives at all levels have strived to make the game safer, the risk for major injuries will never vanish completely.
What does this have to do with race, though? White players have suffered debilitating injuries as well. Never fear, the Scientific American finds an angle:
“While this form of entertainment has been normalized, Hamlin’s injury demonstrates that ordinary violence has potentially deadly consequences and highlights how Black men’s athletic labor sustains this brutal system.”
“In a way that is reminiscent of Black feminist scholar Hortense Spillers’ theorization of flesh, these situations demonstrate how organizations, administrators and fans dismiss each player’s personhood, strip them of their humanity and reduce them to mere bodies. No football athlete deserves this treatment. They should not be expected to play after enduring, experiencing, and witnessing bodily traumas.”
“Further, to dismiss the almost certain breaking down of their bodies as just part of the game is a process of objectification and commodification that prioritizes the player over the person in a way that Black feminist scholar bell hooks says calls to mind “the history of slavery and the plantation economy.” The anti-Blackness of the system is inescapable.”
How in God’s name is a system that allows black athletes to become millionaires and sports celebrities anti-black? Furthermore, almost 70% of the men playing the game professionally happen to be black. One would think the race-baiters and civil rights groups would celebrate this reality.
There exists only two ways to help rid America of this so-called brutal system for black people: ending the game of football completely or going back to the days of segregation when only white people were allowed to participate in sports across the South. Of course, embarking on either route would decrease opportunities for black individuals to move up the economic ladder and increase black poverty in the process. This would undoubtedly excite white nationalists.
Maybe this is the future liberals want. After all, the woke left and racist right often find themselves in agreement.
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