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 ...
Does that mean football is racist?
Do Black men dish out any violence during a football game?? Asking for a friend.....
Football is racist... yes.
Perhaps all black men should be banned from football because it is too rough? Because they are exploited by being forced to accept millions for their athleticism? Really? The mag is called Scientific American, but it is neither Scientific, nor American.
Overkill, SA. Total overkill. Proving you aren’t scientific, you’re political, just like the CDC.
Gentle giants.. all of them... didn’t you see Shawshank Redemption?
Wow you really have to be an idiot, racist, fraud or all of the above, to write this article.
Blacks have most of the positions and money in football so they are victims. Incredible.
oops.. meant to say ‘The Green Mile...’ getting my prison movies mixed up...
Or The Green Mile.
In my youth white kids used to play football in my neighborhood.
All survived without substantial injury I am happy to say.
If the game is too violent, don’t play it.
We played tackle football without helmets or pads... kind of crazy looking back at it. We were free range where I lived...
Would be amusing if full-contact football evolved into touch football. Imagine if they started handing out the equivalent of soccer red cards for deliberate hits.
Football or gang warfare?
I’ve never heard of racial stacking in any sport. Coaches recruit and play players at their best possible position.
In my opinion people having a build substantially different than mine should not be allowed to play in the NFL (or make the big money (I’d rather have)).
We are already there. Tom Brady. Not 100%. But we are on our way.
Who knows if football will even survive in this environment? Masculinity itself is ‘toxic.’
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