Four weeks into the NFL season, the league has continued its woke messaging propaganda. Its stated objective is to bring awareness to racial injustice. In reality, the NFL is spreading leftist propaganda that hides the real issues of the people the NFL claims it is trying to help.
Consider homicides in the black community. Black people commit homicides at a rate significantly higher than their percentage of the population. Black people comprise 12.4% of the U.S. population, yet account for more than half of murderers (in which the race of the offender is known) and more than half of all murder victims. These are issues that actually matter and harm black people all over the country.
Yet, for all the messaging such as “end racism” that the NFL peddles, there is not one bit of messaging that advises to “end murder.” And this is at a time when the United States recorded the highest increase in homicide rate in modern history, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is homicides, not racism, that are increasing at record levels. The NFL is silent regarding that. This all started largely after the death of George Floyd.
Filmmaker Eli Steele and I discussed the initiative by the NFL. Steele is a prominent voice on race in the U.S. His film What Killed Michael Brown? is a documentary that discusses the shooting of Michael Brown in 2014 and addresses race relations in the U.S. The film is written and narrated by scholar and author Shelby Steele, Eli’s father.
“The NFL’s mistake, I believe, is that they chose to address the killing in a political way,” Eli Steele told me. “As we know, politics mostly serves those in power and not those in need. And the worse thing about this type of political messaging is that they push the beyond-cliched victim narrative that lacks the tools of uplift.”
Should the death of George Floyd have had anything to do with a discussion on alleged racism in the country? It is a debatable question. Why did George Floyd become a martyr to police racism when police do the same thing to white people all the time? Tony Timpa had died in almost identical circumstances four years earlier, to no one’s notice, and most of the people the police shoot are white.
Most people who saw the video of Floyd felt it was a gross injustice. But the narrative holding that Floyd was a victim of racism — and more, of a racist system — is not an accurate portrayal of what happened in his case or what happens across the country every year.
Rightly or wrongly, the NFL chose to jump into the fray and adopt such messaging — perhaps as a way of mollifying activists or dealing with the trend of players kneeling during the National Anthem. Steele recommends less wokeness, political cliches, and victimization propaganda and more of an empowering, optimistic message.
“There are many great organizations in impoverished neighborhoods who are working individual by individual to make the world a better place,” he said. “They do not use political messaging as a tool of uplift. When one visits these organizations, one often hears messages such as ‘believe in yourself,’ ‘you can do it,’ ‘work hard and reap the rewards,’ and even ‘I love you.’”
Studies have shown the correlation between optimism and encouragement and life satisfaction. Such messaging encourages self-improvement and is vastly superior to the NFL’s propaganda.
“These messages may sound pointless, but to a person trying to uplift oneself, they are wind beneath their wings,” Steele said. “That is why, for me, a figure like [former quarterback Colin] Kapaernick is far less inspiring than a Michael Jordan, who faced more than his share of obstacles to stay at the highest level for so long.”
It’s hard to know the true intentions of NFL messaging, but it’s clear that it accomplishes little in terms of improving the socioeconomic issues people of any race face in real life. The league’s embrace of the false narrative that racism fuels police shootings, even though most of the people killed by police are white, is a fraction of the truth that does not serve society well.
“I really don’t think that the NFL should be in the business of messaging,” Steele said. “The NFL already has the most powerful message: what the athletes had to go through in order to make it to the top. We all know how many quarterbacks that the quarterback on the field had to beat to get to where he is. That’s the message,” Steele said. “Even if we fail to play college or pros, that message carries over into our everyday lives and work. It’s one of the strongest messages of positivity, and it is the key to the American spirit.”
“That’s why we love nothing more than seeing the underdog — even Michael Jordan was the underdog at one point in his life — make it onto the field,” he said. “I believe that message will do far more to eradicate the bad elements in our society.”
In the end, sports bring people together of all races. Radical leftist propaganda is the opposite of that, dividing people. The two are ill-suited for one another.
“We all need something larger than ourselves to believe in and aspire to,” Steele told me. “That is why the anti-racist message is so lacking in inspiration. It’s just about our skin color and forcing people to declare allegiance to empty mantras. The NFL is free to do whatever it wants, but even they know that I’m speaking a language that they recognize to be true. After all, I learned from them in my youth.”
