From the Undefeated -
The NFL’s racial divide
Teams don’t consciously build rosters based on race, it just ends up that way
BY JASON REID AND JANE MCMANUS
On the field, the modern NFL, for the most part, is a meritocracy. But the individual positions on a roster can resemble the ordered black-and-white squares of a chessboard. The story of the enduring blackness of the running back position is part of a much bigger narrative about race and football that dates to a period when African-Americans were unofficially banned from playing in the NFL. And even today, the racial composition of NFL lineups is shaped as much by societal factors as the inclination of decision-makers to stick with what has worked so well for so long.
In the past few decades, critics have decried the way black players historically were blocked from playing quarterback in the NFL – an insulting and economically disenfranchising move. However, statistics show that times are changing – albeit still way too slowly. And although the league’s percentage of African-American signal-callers increased from 18 percent to only 19 percent during a 14-year span analyzed by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) at the University of Central Florida, the emergence of young superstars such as Russell Wilson, Cam Newton, Dak Prescott and others have proved over and over again that those anachronistic ideas about leadership and intellect are no longer applicable. Warren Moon could write a book on it. Actually, he did.
https://theundefeated.com/features/the-nfls-racial-divide/
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