Posted on 01/07/2023 6:15:17 PM PST by shadowlands1960
The “terrifyingly ordinary” nature of football’s violence disproportionately affects Black men
Millions of people watched as Damar Hamlin, a 24-year-old player in the National Football League (NFL), executed a seemingly routine tackle during a highly anticipated Monday Night Football game. Immediately after, Hamlin rose to his feet and then collapsed. Players from his team, the Buffalo Bills, and the opposing team, the Cincinnati Bengals, created a tight huddle around him on the field as medical personnel tried to revive him. We learned the next day that Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest; his heart had suddenly stopped working.
This scene was horrific for both its regularity and its exceptionality. Matt Gutman of ABC tweeted as much: “The scariest part of this is that the hit was in fact not scary. It looked terrifyingly ordinary.” 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
It’s horrible. Those NFL Plantation owners buy their slaves in Africa, have their overseers keep them on the plantation, and make them say “Massah” and “Yas suh” while slaving away in the hot sun. No wonder it’s such a violent workplace.
Easy solution.
Only allow 12-15% of players to be black. To mirror society’s percentages.
Fascinating. How do the white players avoid it?
I watched the 49ers practice once without their pads and helmets... That was when their camp was down the road from me at American River College...they were quite gentle...
The apophenia is strong with this one.
Absolute trash article
I’m not even going to read this tripe. As far as a tackle from an NFL game it was routine and not an overly violent play. We should see a lot more players going down if that really was too violent of a hit.
They have their ‘white privilege’ to fall back on. Pay attention!
Same can be said for hockey, but that would focus on mostly white players. Hockey can be a very dangerous, bloody sport to play, at least at pro level.
But it’s perfectly safe and pastoral for white guys.
She’ll be praised for this, trust me.
Hard on the dentition...
I’ve been predicting this, as now the overwhelming number of players are black, and we do see white parents discouraging their kids from playing football out of concern for their long-term health.
Will we see a black backlash against football? I wouldn’t be shocked to see it happen within the next 10 years or so.
She makes a big deal out that actually... pretty much saying that because the hit was so routine it shows how violent the sport is (paraphrase).
It’s also sexist. Even though men are only about 48% of the population, they make up 100% of all injuries in football.
We need more females injured.
Until now no one was low enough and disgusting enough to make this a racial thing. Along comes a failure of a magazine and it blames this on racial hate.
Scientific American was once a good mag. It is now not good enough to train puppies on.
Lots of women are at the games so that memo didn’t work
Nobody’s forcing them to play.
Victims... all of them.
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