Statements barely addressing an unarmed black man’s death are closer to obligation than any commitment to social justice
On Saturday, five days after the killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota, the NFL spoke out. It released a short statement by its commissioner, Roger Goodell, offering his condolences to the Floyd family, stating the “urgent need for action” without identifying what that action might be, addressing “systemic issues” without specifying what those issues were. The words “police”, “black” and “racism” were not mentioned. It was a word salad, reading like the cryptic statement of a surly 61-year-old teenager, fed through the yoghurt pot of a corporate communications department, and spat out on to the internet in a shareable meme format.
The NFL’s commitment to social justice may have come across a little more sincerely had the sport not so ruthlessly ostracised the San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick when he made his on-field protests against police brutality in 2016 and 2017. As Joe Lockhart, the league’s former vice-president, admitted last week, the decision by NFL owners not to hire Kaepernick was an ideological choice. “No owner was willing to put the business at risk over this issue,” he said. And as Goodell himself put it at an owners’ meeting in Texas last December: “We’ve moved on.”
Related: FA says it will show common sense if footballers take a knee in matches
There is virtually no trend, no movement, no conversation that big brands will not try to centre on themselves
