Guest Post: The NFL thinks its fans are racist.

 A while back, I told a friend that I struggle with my NFL fandom because I assume that a lot of the players I admire probably consider me a racist. He immediately pushed back, and maybe he was right. I didn't respond at the time, because it felt like any explanation I gave would sound like McGruber being more racist trying to not be racist.

But I think I can explain it better now, with the way things have gone in the United States with Critical Race Theory and Democrats in general.

Just recently, the top general in the US said he believed Trump wouldn't step down after losing the 2020 election. This is just one example among dozens of how divided we've gotten in the US along partisan lines. 

The more I look into it, the more convinced I am that the "insurrection" on January 6th really was just a protest, not even a riot. I've seen videos of capitol police waving people in through the gates, talking with them calmly, taking pictures with them. I’ve seen videos of Trump supporters calling out other protestors when they began to vandalize, asking the capitol police to stop or arrest them, and the capitol police doing nothing.  

More recently, there have been reports that many, if not most, of the J6 ringleaders and organizers aren't being charged. The suggestion is that they are probably FBI assets. In the light of past exposures of FBI agents goading people into terror plots just so they could arrest, it is believable. It makes me think the whole thing is likely a nothingburger that Democrats are using to score political points.

The 1619 Project—which posits that the US was specifically founded on slavery and is only rich and powerful today because of the free labor of slaves—has become widely taught among black activists, lately. Critical race theory teaches that whites are inherently racist.  The woke zeitgeist asserts that it’s racist to be colorblind and treat everyone as equal individuals. Instead, you must actively boost blacks and minorities, support reparations, and denounce whiteness. It's a Kafka trap: in order to not be racist, you must confess to being racist, and if you deny it, you are racist.

It might be a stretch to assume that Patrick Mahomes, Tyreek Hill, the Honey Badger, and other players all fully embrace this view. But I think it would be naive to assume that none of them have been influenced by it. I think it is safe to assume that, if I were in a conversation with them and I said I thought Black Lives Matter was a shakedown organization that enriched its leaders while doing nothing for blacks and actively making racial division and tensions worse, most of them would see me as a white guy trying to protect my privilege.

Or maybe not. Patrick has a white mom and a white wife. But the thing in the NFL, as in pretty much all US society, is that if you are half-white, half-black, you're black. Obama was the US first black President, even though he never knew his dad, was raised by a white family, mostly overseas in India and Hawaii. Kaepernick is the face of Racist Oppression of Blacks, even though he's mixed. There were questions over whether Russell Wilson was black enough. The new “one drop rule” is that, if you are mixed, you are expected to embrace the victimhood of your black ancestors.

I was raised to believe the ideal is colorblindness; that you treat everyone as an individual, and don't ascribe attributes to them just because of skin color or other physical features. Now, that is considered racism. But I can't abandon that ideal. I ascribe differences in behavior as cultural. And while I don't buy into the multiculturalism that teaches all cultures are equally good, neither do I simply believe that different cultural values are inherently bad.

I think this fits exactly with Martin Luther King Jr's Dream that people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. But if you mention that Dream to black activists these days, they'll call you racist. Anti-racism is, in effect, embracing racism that helps modern blacks "get even” for anti-black racism of decades and centuries past.

Some would say it is racism that would make me hesitate to say any or all of this to Mahomes or Tyreek. I would counter it is because racial activists have been excessively divisive, stirring up grievances, and declaring any disagreement with their view to be outright racism. There is no dialogue possible, only accusations or confessions of racism are allowed.

So that's why I struggle with my fandom.  It is possible that assuming that black players would think I'm a typical racist white guy is racism in itself.  But I don't think so.  I think it's actually that the well has been poisoned so thoroughly that I can't imagine someone in the NFL remaining separate from woke views.

How can I support that with my eyes that increase their advertising bottom line? Sure, they get the same amount of money whether I go to watch the games or not.  Their income is already set for the next couple of years whether I watch or not.

But there are thousands like me struggling with whether to continue watching and thousands more who already said the NFL has crossed a line of getting involved in divisive culture and tuned out. My decision doesn't affect anyone else's decision.  But if we all say "my individual decision doesn't matter" then the NFL profits from participating in divisive anger. My eyes won't matter, and it's not like if I decide to watch that anyone else is going to know or be influenced if they do know.

Still, I am responsible for my own actions. Why should I want to contribute to a worldview that considers me inherently and irredeemably racist simply due to my skin color?