Racism Spotlight Shifts from Tea Parties to NFL

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  • 03/02/2023

Admit it, America - despite President Obama fueling talk of a new value added tax, the biggest news in primetime tonight will be who goes first in the NFL draft.

But the NFL, which works harder than Scarlett O’Hara fitting into a corset to avoid any label of racism, is being scrutinized in the media over the drafting of Toby Gerhart, a white superstar back from Stanford who declared for this year’s NFL draft.

Gerhart, who finished second in this year’s Heisman Trophy voting, told Yahoo! Sports reporter Michael Silver, “’One team I interviewed with asked me about being a white running back… They asked if it made me feel entitled, or like I felt I was a poster child for white running backs. I said, ‘No, I’m just out there playing ball. I don’t think about that.’ I didn’t really know what to say.”’

Silver said a veteran NFL scout told him that if Gerhart were black, he would go in the first round, though other “talent evaluators” implied to Silver that Gerhart’s race had nothing to do with where he would go in the draft.

In the end, your play on the football field does the talking, but it’s not so good when the process of getting to the football field requires questions about your skin color.

Actually, the Senate, as it considers a new budget proposal which Politico reports increases government debt by $3.9 trillion by 2015, could learn a few things from another NFL move regarding one of its most prominent quarterbacks and two time Super Bowl winner Ben Roethlisberger, who just got suspended six games for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy after a second allegation of sexual misconduct (though he was not charged): if you repeatedly put yourself in a bad situation, you’re eventually going to pay the price.

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