“More than 300 Black former NFL [National Football League] players originally denied payments from the league’s massive concussion settlement now qualify for money or league-funded medical treatment, according to a report filed in federal court, following the elimination of controversial ‘race-norming’1 from the settlement.” (from the Washington Post, August 12)
In 2013, 4,500 current and former professional football players settled their lawsuit against the NFL for the brain injuries suffered by the players while they were playing football. The settlement was to pay the families of those players who are dead, for those players who are currently injured, for the players’ medical costs, and for the players’ attorney fees (see “NFL Concussion Settlement: $765 Million to Suppress the Truth About Brain Injuries” at revcom.us).
Attorneys for the Black players, who make up 70 percent of current players and 60 percent of retired players in the NFL, suspected that white players were qualifying for awards at two or three times the rate of Blacks since the payouts began in 2017. Because of this, in 2021, two former Black NFL players, Kevin Henry and Najeh Davenport, sued the league for racial discrimination.
Their lawsuit stated: “Black former players are automatically assumed (through a statistical manipulation called 'race-norming') to have started with worse cognitive functioning than White former players. As a result, if a Black former player and a White former player receive the exact same raw scores on a battery of tests designed to measure their current cognitive functioning, the Black player is presumed to have suffered less impairment, and he is therefore less likely to qualify for compensation.”2
Yes, the NFL was using a racist medical practice to eliminate Black players from being compensated, and the NFL knew this in 2019 and did nothing to stop it, as payouts to deserving Black players would cost the league more if they did stop “race-norming.”
Sociologist Victor Ray put it this way: “Even with the NFL’s overwhelming financial prominence, race norming was one way the league could more closely moderate who was eligible (read: worthy) for a settlement. Yet, despite its contemporary uses, race norming can be traced back to plantation slavery, eugenics efforts globally and a long history of racial science used to justify the belief in inferior racial groups. These misguided scientific endeavors are rooted in an idea that Black people’s bodies are inherently different from white people’s bodies.”3 What Ray is describing is a method to use different measurements for Black people than any other race, which is nothing more than systematic racism.
When Henry and Davenport’s disclosure became public, a shitstorm of criticism hit the NFL. But Roger Goodell, the league’s Commissioner, refused to take any responsibility for the NFL’s racist practice. He said, “The courts are the ones that ultimately make the decisions about the processes that are used to evaluate players to receive benefits.” Brad Karp, the NFL’s attorney, claimed it was the doctors who decide to use race-norming, not the NFL. Goodell went on, “Yes, we think this should be changed if there are better processes.” Better processes??? What!! A better racist process?
As the outrage about “race-norming” continued, the NFL decided to backtrack. In June 2021, the league pledged to eliminate race-norming from the settlement process, but refused to take a stand against it. Here is what Karp said: “Race norms are being removed from the Settlement Program not because they have been found to make it ‘harder’ for Black individuals to qualify for benefits, but because the NFL believes the neuropsychological community can do better” (my emphasis).
Doctors who have participated in the settlement process have disputed Karp’s assertion that the doctors and the neuropsychological community are the responsible parties for race-norming. The Washington Post interviewed Charles Golden, a neuropsychologist and professor of psychology at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, who said of Karp’s assertion, “That's just not true…. Whenever you didn’t [race-norm], and it made a difference, and the player qualified … they, BrownGreer [the law firm hired by the NFL to oversee the settlement payments] and the NFL, went after you.”4
Well, that shit is over for now. It has been reported that “Of the 646 Black men whose tests were rescored, nearly half now qualify for dementia awards. Sixty-one are classified as having early to moderate dementia, with average awards topping $600,000; nearly 250 more have milder dementia and will get up to $35,000 in enhanced medical testing and treatment.”5
The NFL “race-norming” has ended, and that’s a good thing. But this is a sports league that has a history of racism: racist team names, Black players banned until 1945, an unwritten quota for Black players in the 1940s and 1950s, refusing to allow Black players to play quarterback until the 1980s, Las Vegas Raiders’ head coach John Gruden’s racist emails, and currently being sued for racial discrimination by three current and former Black coaches. So stay tuned.