football

Photo by Tammy Anthony Baker, Flickr CC

In the last few months, President Trump’s incendiary tweets have found a home in sports, including comments on the NFL, the NBA, and college basketball. In a recent article in ABC News, sociologists discuss how Trump’s tweets about sports with high percentages of Black athletes are racially-coded, and may reveal Trump’s own racial bias and attempts to appeal to his political base.

In response to President Trump’s  demand that owners fire NFL players for kneeling, sociololgist Ben Carrington argues,

“When Trump uses language referring to Black athletes or other Black figures that kind of speak out in terms of them being ungrateful and undeserving of their place in sports, he’s re-invoking that dark era in American sports in which that language was explicit and Black players couldn’t play.”

In another example, Trump demanded thanks for keeping three UCLA basketball players out of jail in China after shoplifting, calling the father of one player an “ungrateful fool” and “a poor man’s version of Don King, but without the hair.” As these tweets gain headlines, the media may miss the core racial issues that drive this kind of dialogue in sports, according to sociologist Doug Hartmann.

“Trump’s been able to make the focus be on whether this is appropriate or not, and how players should be punished or disciplined, and completely distracted our attention from the racial issues that the players who are protesting want to focus our attention on – police brutality, huge wealth gaps, the treatment of African Americans in cities — those are real racial issues.”

In short, Trump’s tweets and the media’s coverage of them divert public attention from larger issues of racial injustice in the United States.

Photo by Keith Allison, Flickr CC
Photo by Keith Allison, Flickr CC

A recent article in The New York Times highlights the complicated picture behind NFL suspensions, which can ruin many a fantasy-football Sunday. Often, players are suspended for legal issues such as domestic abuse or drugs. Considering the recent discussion surrounding head injuries in football, however, we may see suspensions for different reasons. As opposed to the current system of punishment through fines, suspensions deter players from doling out violent or dangerous hits during games.

Fines—as expensive as they can be—are often very minuscule in relation to an NFL player’s income. Taking players out of the line up on game day, however, could be a stronger punishment for athletes. Of course, even if this becomes the norm within the league, the transition won’t be easy. As explained by University of Minnesota sociology professor and TSP’s Doug Hartmann,

“[T]he league wants and needs to get rid of dirty plays and players, [but] they don’t want to take actions that compromise, or even appear to compromise, the actual contests themselves.”

In other words, preserving the quality of the game and the sport is important to the league, especially if they feel that viewership will drop if the games appear restrained. Whatever the future holds for suspensions and roughness in football, it’s sure to be a tight contest.

Photo of Marcel Love by Greg Keene via Flickr.
Go Love!  Photo of Marcel Love by Greg Keene via Flickr.

In response to the disturbing number of domestic violence arrests of its players, the NFL recently created a panel for implementing domestic abuse education and prevention strategies within the league. Beth Ritchie, the University of Illinois at Chicago’s director of the Institute of Research on Race and Public Policy, was named as one of its five senior advisors.

In an interview with Jia Tolentino for Jezebel, Richie explains that “Race and gender and class justice can’t be separated.” Because about two-thirds of the NFL’s players are African American, it’s important to understand how these factors are connected in designing an effective domestic abuse education program. She explains:

…African-American people perceive and therefore use (or don’t use) police differently. The police aren’t necessarily seen as a protective force; there’s a different loyalty to one’s own people in disclosing, there’s a protectiveness built up from the way the media skews the actions of black men. Consequently, black sexual assault survivors have to walk through a maze before they can acknowledge the abuse or are willing to come forward. There’s a different willingness to turn our men over to the state. And I don’t want to say that turning in an abuser is easy for any woman, but it’s meaningfully different for black women.

Because of this dynamic, Richie plans to work with the wives and partners of NFL players as well, to better understand the challenges of preventing domestic violence. Mindful of the complexity of the problem, she’s excited about the NFL’s initiative:

The NFL taking this up so aggressively is very important, but there’s a real need to be careful; the NFL is an employer, not law enforcement, not family. I think they are trying to be respectful of women’s desires to make their own decisions about whom they’re with, while still holding men accountable.