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Racism + Sports
Once Upon a Time, a Football Player Took a Knee
Unpacking the latest on NFL systemic racism
Once upon a time, a football player took a knee.
He didn’t yell, he didn’t scream.
He was calm and full of peace.
But the world chose not to hear him.
And instead, a knee was later sunk into a black life.
Turning up the volume on systemic racism, — more impolite than they could’ve ever imagined.
While HBCU’s were the subject target of threats at the rise of Black History month, — the same day, — the NFL was being served on a target platter. On February 1, 2022, NFL Coach Brian Flores filed a class-action suit against the organization, in conjunction with the Miami Dolphins, Denver Broncos, and New York Giant organizations, respectively. Flores’ suit against the team organizations alleges systemic racism in hiring practices.
The 58-page lawsuit comes almost a month after his firing as head coach from the Miami Dolphins and after what Flores referenced as his refusal to purposefully lose games for greater chances at better draft picks, accepting money for game losses, and tampering with a quarterback before free agency.
Flores claims in the suit that his refusal was responded to with disdain treatment and labels of non-compliant and difficult to work with. Despite setting a record-breaking back-to-back winning season in 2020, and 2021, Flores was fired on January 10th.
The lawsuit also alleges that in 2019, in an effort to help with Dolphin’s draft position, the Giants and the Broncos conducted “bogus” in-person interviews with him just to comply with the Rooney Rule. Named after the late Dan Rooney, chairman of the organization’s Workplace Diversity Committee, the Rooney rule is an NFL policy that requires teams to interview minority candidates for head coaching and senior management opportunities.
Though Flores’ January 27th interview with the Giants certainly satisfied the rule, the New York Giants decided to hire Brian Daboll a day later. Flores also alleged a similar incident occurred when interviewing with the Denver Broncos in 2019. The Broncos would eventually…
