My intent is not to make this a sports blog, but as a sports fan often the connection between broad culture and sports can’t be denied. This week Brian Flores announced a suit against the NFL for racist hiring practices of head coaches. The NFL has attempted to resolve this issue by the Rooney Rule. This is a rule which requires a team with an opening for head coach or general manager to interview at least two minority candidates for these positions. The logic here was two fold. Point one was to find someone that you might have considered and hire them either for the exact position or for another position which places the candidate in a better spot to become a head coach or general manager in the future. The more problematic piece of logic was to give minority candidates practice in interviewing. The difficult portion for me is that this is assuming that a minority can’t express themselves in an articulate manner. This program has had limited success and the number of minority coaches is three with only one of them being a Black American. This number has changed to five with two African-Americans and one bi-racial (black father).
Black coaches have been fired under strange and questionable circumstances. The most recent was the Houston Texans firing David Culley after one year. Culley was a career assistant coach who was not considered a candidate by most teams because he was 65 years old and he had never been a coordinator, although he did hold the position of Asst head coach. This distinction is important because the hunting ground for NFL head coaches is generally successful offensive or defensive coordinators. After a season with the Texans, Culley was fired because of “philosophical differences,” essentially in the manner in which offseason changes to improve the team would be made. The Texans replaced the relatively inexperienced Culley with the overqualified Lovie Smith, who is an African-American. Interestingly though, Flores was also a candidate for the Texans job. Through his legal representation , Flores thanked the Texans for a fair interview, but then criticized them for not hiring him because he has a pending lawsuit.
My personal reaction to Flores is well, of course, the Texans are going to deal with you and the case you have against the NFL in general. And yes, hiring another black coach with experience sort of takes them out of the loop of the legal ramifications. The Rooney Rule itself does not solve the problem of the owner and upper administration at least being personally biased if not further down the racist trail. In some ways, the rule attempts to use race as a method of combating racial bias. From the standpoint of an individual black in the so-called perfect world two things happen. The first is that the individual is judged on his own merit without regard to race. The second thing the heart, soul or inside of the person has the ability to unbiased judgment from the previous sentence. How this is accomplished is the part which I have no ability to change on any sort of massive scale even if I knew what worked for masses of humans. In the end , it starts with one person at a time.
Black Individualism 