The National Football League recently announced its plans to stop the practice known as “race norming” after two black football players filed a civil rights suit.
Race norming has long been a part of the settlement process when retired players filed for disability benefits due to the brain damage we now know is
caused by multiple concussions.
After years of resistance and legal wrangling, the NFL began a compensation program to help these players deal with the medical expenses and life adjustments made necessary by their brain damage.
Race norming refers to the NFL’s decision that, in calculating this disability compensation, black players began their careers with lower cognitive abilities than white players. As ESPN reports, “The practice had made it harder for Black players to show a [cognitive] deficit and qualify for an award.”
That racist assumption systematically reduced the severity of claims made by black players as compared to white players.
Hopefully, the NFL will remain true to its word by not only abolishing race norming but by also reimbursing all the black players who received inadequate settlements in the past.
Race norming is yet another clear example of systemic racism at work in American society.
As far as I am concerned, these revelations about the NFL’s race norming practices puts a big, big score on the side of Critical Race Theory, which clarifies the many subtle ways in which systemic racism is embedded throughout our society.
Yet, far too many in the country continue to deny the existence of systemic racism! While evangelical Christianity has deepened its condemnation of Critical Race Theory.
The contradiction on display here is as palpable as it is repulsive.
Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from this particular intersection of events is the stark exposure of white evangelicalism’s moral turpitude.
The evangelical church is more concerned with fighting its culture wars while tilting at secular windmills than it is in following Jesus. For Jesus taught us to confess our sins and repent, daily.
Confession requires introspection and honest self-examination. Confession means that we ask the Holy Spirit to reveal our faults and then listen as He speaks to us through others who recognize the habits we have closed our eyes to.
This story of race norming in the NFL ought to be the final nail in the coffin for all those — I am thinking especially of the Southern Baptist Convention, where members will reschedule Sunday services around the afternoon football game — ethically calloused and racially obtuse Christians who refuse to recognize the facts of systemic racism in America.
Evangelicalism’s silence on this score is its own condemnation.
