NFL Faces Racial Discrimination Lawsuit

On today’s podcast, David and Sarah talk about all aspects of Brian Flores’s lawsuit against ...

By and

On today’s podcast, David and Sarah talk about all aspects of Brian Flores’s lawsuit against the NFL, with a deep dive into law and culture. They then turn to he who shall not be named and pour water on a specious vision of the apocalypse. They wind up with an impromptu discussion of Whoopi Goldberg, Roseanne Barr, grace, and accountability.

Show Notes:

–Brian Flores’s NFL lawsuit

–David in The Atlantic: “The NFL Has a ‘Good Ol’ Boy’ Problem”

Keep reading with a free account
Create a free Dispatch account to keep reading Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
By and
Comments (194)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Wojtek

    A great way to examine whether Sarah and David (and Americans, in general) inject too much race into every argument, lets take race out of this argument and see if it still works:

    Note, in the list of current NFL coaches, only one (ONE!) is of Polish ancestry. This, despite Polish descendants comprising a significant portion of the population.

    Is this discrepancy the consequence of a racist legacy, needlessly perpetuated for non-racist reasons?

    No. It's simply the consequence of nepotism.

    As a Polish not-yet-but-hopefully-soon-to-be American who doesn't care one whiff about football, I say, "who cares!". If NFL management want to hire their nieces and nephews, and children-in-law, then let them.

    It seems perhaps admirable, but is in fact more than a little bizarre -- at least to this very recent immigrant -- how much time y'all spend talking about this stuff, and yet fail to notice how this over-indulgence clouds your thinking.

    Quoting Kmele Foster: The "shape and shade of people's gonads" should not matter. Please, for the love of God, stop thinking, and arguing, like you believe otherwise.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
      Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

      The NFL never banned polish people from working within the organization. And there were never laws on the books banning polish people from attending good schools or voting. So the comparison simply isn't apt. Indeed, the fact that polish americans make up 2% of the population (and far less among college or NFL players) and 3% of the NFL coaches perhaps proves the point more than you'd like to admit.

      Collapse
      1. Wojtek

        Maybe this is more useful:

        Your argument is, roughly speaking, that nepotism causes past discrimination to cast a long shadow into the present.

        My argument is that the only long shadow here is one of nepotism. Millions of families are excluded from NFL management on account of not being relations. The focus on excluded families of only some colors is, itself, kinda racist.

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photocircle-angle-nib
          Sarah Isgur vertical-nib Author

          Except for one big difference: none of those other people's families were banned from working at the NFL because of their race. So their families all had an equal opportunity to have nepotism work on their behalf. Unless you were black. That's why we focus on race. Because the NFL did.

          Collapse
          1. Wojtek

            Reframing again, for clarity:

            Germany has a history of discriminating against Poles. Your point, in essence, is that *current* Germans ought to somehow atone or adjust for the misdeeds of their ancestors, in compensation for the long shadow those misdeeds cast on the distribution of Poles in European society -- a measurable fact.

            My claim is, again, that this is backward-looking and immoral. There are *individual* Germans who participated in the horrors of those years, but they're mostly dead. Today I, as a Pole, have basically as much in common with their descendants as I do with the descendants of Poles they oppressed. We're all united as children with a shared history of conflict. The way we get past that conflict is to recognize its causes and resolve not to go down similar paths.

            Indeed, I would be offended on behalf of any German who was denied any opportunity in compensation for the sins of their parents. Our kinship as people depends on treating one another as equals, and any attempt to "correct" past injustice that extends beyond those who committed it only creates an additional sense of injustice today.

            If the goal is fairness and justice, our children should be as uninterested with the shade of their peers as they are with distributions of their blood types, shapes of their heads, and where their names fall in the alphabet.

            Collapse
          2. Wojtek

            I get that. But my reading is that this focus is, in itself, a perpetuation of racism.

            I suppose it's a minor point. It's just a jarring cultural difference coming from Canada and having mixed-race kids. Most of this stuff seems kind of petty and irrelevant. Do my kids count as excluded because of nepotism, or because of color? Or are they only half in the long shadow? Should they be partially aggrieved? I mean, both their parents were either born outside the country or have parents who were.

            IMHO, this is not a way to a race-blind society. I'd rather they grew up in a world where this kind of racial arithmetic wasn't a thing.

            Collapse
      2. Wojtek

        That's fair in terms of percentage. But if I was less careless I could have picked some other familial bloodline that would have made my point better.

        My point is that history has lost its relevance to the present. You're drawing a causal argument from racism through to current nepotism. Nepotism is clearly a feature of American football management. It's probably not a feature in baseball. That baseball management has a more diverse set of shapes and shades of gonads in its coaching pool is not a sign that baseball has cast off its racist legacy, in the same way that a preponderance of Jewish executives in Hollywood is not a perpetuation of its racist past -- even *if* the past was racist.

        These are, and continue to be family-run businesses.

        There's certainly an interesting debate about whether that's a good thing for business generally. But that debate doesn't hinge on the similarity of the participants' DNA.

        Collapse
  2. Avatar photo
    WKDawson

    Sarah,

    Again, I can largely agree that a lot of the selection process comes from just who they were used to. Still, it also says that many blacks are basically not even in the network. This is very reminiscent of my experience living in outside the US for a long time. I've lived in Japan for more than 20 years and I basically have to compete for the same jobs as Japanese. I don't think Japanese are particularly racist, not any more so than Americans. However, when it comes to fitting in, an American like me doesn't have the same level of language, cannot laugh at all the same jokes, and certainly doesn't embody the same customs and practices. So, it isn't exactly "old boy's network", but there is a network, and as a foreigner, you find that you are not part of it. That is very likely what happens in the NFL. The players are never really made a genuine part of that inner circle, so they are pushed aside and passed up when the opportunities arrive.

    I don't see how this can be easily fixed. One has to develop a will to invite other people in. Most of us tend to work with what we are comfortable with. We have to be willing to take risks and willing learn how to resolve misunderstandings and learn from our mistakes.

    On Whoopi Goldberg, ... In some ways, her role in Roots, or as that character in Star Trek somewhat confuses things because we expect better of her. She is just an actor, and those rather mature parts she played are created by someone else. Sometimes, I think we have too much celebrity worship. I agree that what she say was probably unintentional. Still, suspending her for two weeks seems like a slap on the wrist. There is responsibility to be on public broadcast and say stupid things.

    I don't this is only about Whoopi Goldberg. One has to ask, if this is the level of discourse that goes on at The View, is the show even worth watching? There must be a lot of people out there who are worth listening to who could provide meaningful information, and the only thing they can invite is celebrities for a vapid discussion?

    Collapse
  3. Avatar photo
    Nathan

    Somehow I didn't know that Sarah was Jewish. It doesn't change my opinion about her, but it's weird that it took so long to come up.

    I thought the legal analysis was interesting and helpful, but I wish David would articulate his preferences a bit more clearly. I've read many articles by him that lamented our alienated, balkanized lives in the age of social media, but the NFL hire-your-friends thing seems to be the natural result of a group of people having close, functioning relationship. People have been hiring friends since the invention of, well, friends! I would prefer something more meritocratic, sure, but I just don't see how you can simultaneously wish for more people to be connected to each other by friendships and lament the natural results of those connections.

    Also, regarding the Rooney rule: does it really help minorities? If you have a huge applicant pool, I can see how it might, but if there are very few qualified people (like for an NFL coaching job) then I think it'd train you to see the minority interviews as the necessary steps to hiring the guy you actually want. Should people act this way? No. Will they? Probably.

    Collapse
  4. David S

    This was definitely one of my least favorite episodes. To put it bluntly, David and Sarah spent most of the pod preaching (or white-splaining) about racism to an audience that almost certainly agrees with them. I tune into this podcast for interesting discussions about the law, the supreme court, and an occasional potpourri of related topics, not to listen to a sermon aimed at the choir. Nothing interesting or new was said for an entire, what, 40 minutes? Know your audience, guys.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Michael Berkowitz

      If it helps, I disagreed with them.

      Collapse
  5. AS Upstate

    Late to the party here, but I just wanted to say that this is one of the best episodes of Advisory Opinions in ages. Really brilliant.

    Two things stand out -

    Hearing two conservative lawyers explain structural racism in such a clear, calm, non-polemical, and jargon-free way is really refreshing. Starting from the "hiring people I know" concept is just such a great way to explain the idea.

    Second, Sarah's critique of Whoopi Goldberg's comments was just spot on. I had similar experiences growing up - and of course had relatives in my grandparents' generation who survived the holocaust (most did not). This insistence that Jewish people are "white," and are not permitted to claim any historic memory of oppression is what really turned my away from the left. It still find this blind spot totally gobsmacking.

    Anyway, truly amazing episode.

    Collapse
  6. Avatar photo
    Anne W (Raw5254)

    A Jewish writer/journalist was mentioned by David, and his name was supposed to be in the show notes, but I’m sure not seeing it. Would someone please provide that.

    Collapse
    1. Eric

      David mentioned Yair Rosenberg.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        Anne W (Raw5254)

        Thanks Eric.

        Collapse
  7. GregS

    I loved your analogy of someone cutting you off in traffic.

    This has been the drum I have been banging for the last 9 months or so. For y'all, the Democrats, in general, seem to be the strangers cutting you off in traffic, and Republicans are your friend who cut you off because she was late getting to the daycare.

    When you make excuses for Chip Roy or McConnell or Crenshaw or Gallagher, but excoriate Biden, you are falling into the same trap that the aggrieved cut-off driver falls into. Media bias is real for the same reasons that structural racism is real - it is the effect of social networks - and it's not just the left that suffers from such bias.

    Collapse
  8. DRHanson

    In 2020 the NFL adopted a policy that seems well-intentioned but could create a perverse incentive for teams to avoid hiring non-Whites working for other teams to fill their head coach or GM vacancies. The NFL considered rewarding teams that hire minority group members as head coaches or GMs, but instead chose to reward teams who develop minority staffers who are hired by other teams to fill HC/GM jobs. If team A's minority assistant coach or personnel executive is hired by team B as a head coach or general manager, team A receives a 3rd round compensatory pick in the next two NFL drafts. If Team A loses 2 minority staffers because they were hired by other teams as head coaches or GMs, team A would be rewarded with three draft picks. Theoretically this will encourage teams to put more minority members on track to advance up the ladder and build their resumes. However, it seems to me that it will also discourage teams from hiring minority head coaches or GMs from the staffs of rival teams. If teams A and B are direct competitors in the same division (or even the same conference), and team B is considering two head coach or GM candidates who are otherwise equally matched, why would they hire the candidate who causes their competitor to receive extra draft picks?

    Collapse
  9. Avatar photo
    Michael Berkowitz

    My sincere thanks to Mr. French for providing an example of Systemic Racism that makes sense to me. I've been asking for one in a variety of forums for a long time and coming up empty. I suppose many who read this will think it's because I just didn't want to acknowledge the phenomenon and nobody could be bothered to explain something so obvious. I won't try to disabuse anyone of such an opinion, but I'll propose an alternative: The term was invariably brought up in contexts like George Floyd and the 1619 Project, with the assumption that it was obvious that American society was and is defined by its racism, implying that all of society was a racist system and thus needed to be torn down. Nuclear families; police forces; SATs; Math. Everything. There was nothing there I could get my hands around to say "Oh, yes, that needs to be dealt with." The examples of professional/social networks that innocently preserve disparities after the intentional discrimination is gone though, make, as I said, perfect sense.

    The thing is, I don't see a place for the Law to get involved in "dismantling" these things. What, if my community is all-white because my grandparents benefitted from redlining (in defense of my grandparents, they didn't), should the community be dismantled? Should residents be forbidden to encourage their children to live nearby? No, it's unfair, but life doles very little out equitably. I will grant that were these bastions of privilege hermetically sealed, such that we could expect to see the same disparities a hundred years from now, we'd have to take action to prevent that. That doesn't seem to be the case, though, and I expect that we'll see continued inroads by groups that have been discriminated against. Too slow, surely, but not slow enough to warrant abrogating the rights of people who are guilty of nothing but good fortune.

    Regarding Whoopi Goldberg, I don't share Ms. Isgur's desire to hear her prove how she's learned her lesson. I can't imagine why I need to know whether or not she's sincere or to pronounce on her character, my son's all being married already. I don't even know why one should care that she apologized, but if we're going to concern ourselves with a certain type of modern American antisemitism I'd give some attention to the way attacks on Jews -- and especially what Ms. Isgur's high-school chum would call the "Jewy" ones -- are so underreported by the NYT and WaPo, and why what reports there are always seem to include "context" that would be totally unacceptable if the victims were of some other group. Or the DEI trainer at Yale who claimed that antisemitism can only be against blacks and that the FBI inflates the number of antisemitic hate crimes. Was she a lone lunatic, or is there a 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 there.

    Collapse
  10. Ted

    This case never goes near a courtroom for one reason: discovery. If you don’t think there is some seriously messed up stuff in texts and emails between NFL GMs, etc., you don’t live in the real world.

    Collapse
Load More