JUST ASKING...
Once again, we appear to be faced with another academic writing that makes me wonder if this is another attempt by the black socialists attempting to sow discord in America by racializing one of our national sports and trying to destroy another long-standing institution.
The research itself appears to be an academic absurdity that is inconsequential in our understanding of our environment and the sport of football.
Damar Hamlin’s Collapse Highlights the Violence Black Men Experience in Football The ordinariness of men running into each other at full speed represents a normalized—even rationalized—violence that is routine to this American game. This ordinary violence has always riddled the sport and it affects all players. But Black players are disproportionately affected. While Black men are severely underrepresented in positions of power across football organizations, such as coaching and management, they are overrepresented on the gridiron. Non-white players account for 70 percent of the NFL; nearly half of all Division I college football players are Black. Further, through a process called racial stacking, coaches racially segregate athletes by playing position. These demographic discrepancies place Black athletes at a higher risk during play. [OCS: Ignoring that football players are selected for their size, agility, and ability to execute complex plays in three dimensions, outstanding player candidates would be welcome regardless of their class characteristics. Simple reasoning tells you that the greater the number of game participants, the greater the number of potential injuries. What is the author saying? Football is a game of racial power politics that diminishes black athletes. That we need to apply identity politics to coaching and front-office management? That there should be a sociological goal other than to entertain America, win, and generate financial gains in the process? Or is the author’s goal more malignant and disruptive?] 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. 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. <Source> [OCS: One is reminded of the wisdom of Booker T. Washington, who noted, “There is a certain class of race problem-solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.” Like a man with a hammer seeing everything as a nail, are certain academics seeing racism in everything with a disproportionate class membership?] ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
2022-present Assistant Professor, Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University 2020 Ph.D., Socio-Cultural Anthropology, University of Virginia; Dissertation: “A Team of Brothers: Race, Kin, and Order in College Football” Sport. Race. Kinship. Masculinity. I’m a socio-cultural anthropologist whose ethnographic research uses sport to theorize race, kinship and care, gender, and the performing body. My work focuses on the lived experiences of Black football players. Currently, I’m an assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and affiliated with the Sports and Race Project at Duke University. My research has been supported by various agencies, including the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, and the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
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Bottom line...
Again I am disappointed in Scientific American for publishing drivel.
I am likewise displeased by certain actors in academia that exploit numerical discrepancies in player participation and management to cry racism, especially in elite sports where performance factors, exclusive of race, determine success.
And, I am suspicious of those who openly fete W.E.B. Du Bois.
From the Communist Party USA…
W.E.B. Du Bois was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. He encountered socialist ideas while he was studying in Germany, where he occasionally attended rallies of the German Social Democratic Party. A pioneer of U.S. sociology and prolific author, Du Bois was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was the first editor of its journal the Crisis.
In 1961, after a lifetime of scholarship and activism, he joined the Communist Party USA, saying ‘Capitalism cannot reform itself. Communism the effort to give all…what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute this is the only way of human life.’ <Source>
It is my personal belief that this is just another one of a cumulative attack on America, American culture, and Americans – with the single goal of dividing our nation by race and destroying it from within.
We are so screwed.
-- Steve
“Nullius in verba.”-- take nobody's word for it!
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”-- George Bernard Shaw
“Progressive, liberal, Socialist, Marxist, Democratic Socialist -- they are all COMMUNISTS.”
“The key to fighting the craziness of the progressives is to hold them responsible for their actions, not their intentions.” – OCS "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves, and traitors are not victims... but accomplices” -- George Orwell “Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." (The people gladly believe what they wish to.) ~Julius Caesar “Describing the problem is quite different from knowing the solution. Except in politics." ~ OCS