anti-racism is not a trend
week five
On February 8th 2021, the NFL released a video for Inspire Change, a year-round social justice initiative to ‘break down barriers to opportunity and end systemic racism’. They pledged to commit $250 million in the fight to end systemic racism over the next 10 years. In short, the initiative aims to provide grant money and funds for grassroots organisations across the US, who primarily focus on the four “Inspire Change pillars”: economic advancement, police-community relations, and criminal justice reform. In essence, the campaign video clearly communicates that Inspire Change is a well-funded initiative actively seeking to challenge racial and social injustices.
The campaign was immediately met with overwhelming criticism, as many users began to call out NFL’s hypocrisy. In May 2016, quarterback Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem in protest against the racial oppression Black people face in America. Changing his method of protesting to kneeling, the NFL banned Kaepernick, who was also publicly ostracised by Donald Trump. In May 2018, the NFL began to issue fines for any player who decided to “take the knee” during the National anthem, which was then put on hold two months later.
One user wrote: “Until you APOLOGIZE for your treatment of @Kaepernick7 and your extreme measures to silence his message by silencing his platform, your efforts to throw money will always land short.”
Following the death of George Floyd in May 2020, which incited the largest resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, initiatives and efforts to become “anti-racist” spiked. It was reported that companies who failed to to promote diversity and inclusion policies would be at financial risk. People had not forgotten the NFL’s decision to continuously silence its Black players and anti-racist protests. It is within reason to question the intentions behind a huge corporation like the NFL, who enabled racism and hostility towards their Black players.
Because that’s one way corporations make money: profitable returns on racism.
As accountability becomes harder to avoid (as well as bad press), anti-racist, diversity and inclusion initiatives can easily be seen as a business move, as opposed to a genuine effort. Racism is not something new, so the NFL’s decision to invest into Inspire Change several years after their contradictory actions is understandably going to be met with criticism. Twitter criticised the initiative because the values communicated in the campaign video do not align with their previous actions. From 2019 to 2020, the number of Black NFL players has grown from 58.9% to 70%. As the majority of players in the NFL are Black, it can be argued that the Inspire Change fits within the NFL’s commercial interests. They cannot continue to profit off of Black football players and remain silent or indifferent to racial and social injustice. This can perhaps be recognised as a strategic business move.
The solution isn’t no more ads about anti-racism; it’s cleaning up the NFL’s own home field before airing them.
Joe Berkowitz (2021)
With more and more big corporations and companies pledging anti-racist, diversity and inclusion initiatives, this often elicits the question, will companies always receive backlash no matter what they do?
Rashad Robinson writes: ‘Right now, corporations are incentivised toward fake solutions that we allow them to pass off as real’. The problem lies with contradictory actions, hypocrisy, and companies saying they’re going to “take action” but then fail to follow through. The NFL cannot simply “solve racism” or be credited for its investments towards Inspire Change, unless they address the exploitative practices that their company is built upon.