Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Some tweets truly say, “I choose violence.” Monday, Rashard Mendenhall chose violence. But he also chose truth and who cares if the truth pisses off some white men? I don’t.
Mendenhall is a former NFL running back who said something publicly that many of us have thought about privately. He tweeted: “I’m sick of average white guys commenting on football. Y’all not even good at football. Can we please replace the Pro Bowl with an All-Black vs All-White bowl so these cats can stop trying to teach me who’s good at football? I’m better than ur goat.”
Wow, my man said white people aren’t even good at football. Of course, there are some great white players, but Mendenhall said a team made up of Black NFL players would be far stronger than a team made up of white NFL players and to that, I say, is that controversial?
Of course, Mendenhall sparked a whole monsoon of controversy because white men don’t like to hear that they’re lesser at anything. They definitely don’t like being reminded that they’re athletically inferior to Black men. I think they know in general that when they enter the realm of sports, it’s Black men who tend to be dominant. They know that. But they hate being reminded of it. It triggers all this white fragility stuff. And because football is like a masculinity contest, the idea of white men being dominated by Black men in football is particularly threatening. But let’s be real — Brother Rashard took a Black barbershop conversation and made it national. Now we gotta deal with what he said. What a time to be alive.
The hard, cold fact is that an all-white team has no chance against an all-Black team because of one critical aspect of the game. When evaluating two teams, we have to look for an area of imbalance, an aspect of the game where one team is a little…
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