Kevin D. Carignan 
by Glenn Nelson
I have long believed that ‘Rooney’ and ‘rule’, when combined, are two of the most insidious words in the English language. This Sunday’s Super Bowl reminds me of the most diabolical form of this bond.
The Rooney Rule is an initiative by the National Football League (NFL) to diversify its ranks of head coaches and team executives. Launched in 2003, the rule initially required NFL teams to interview at least one person of color for their senior openers. It now asks teams to interview two external candidates of color for head coaching positions.
If you are BIPOC, you instantly recognize such a directive as cynical, performative, and dishonest. It won’t surprise you that, in a league where more than 70% of the players are black, before this week only one head coach was black. Lovie Smith became the second black head coach after the Houston Texans hired him Monday to replace David Culley, who is also black. Another, Mike McDaniel, who replaced Brian Flores in Miami on Sunday, is biracial.
The timing of this latest round of racial musical chairs is interesting. Just last week, Flores filed a class action lawsuit against the NFL, accusing him of being the subject of fake interviews by the Denver Broncos and New York Giants for no other reason than compliance with the Rooney Rule. He also alleged that Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross tried to induce him to deliberately lose games and pressured him to break league tampering rules by recruiting a “quarterback.” eminent rear”.
It didn’t take Flores’ class action lawsuit against the NFL to unravel the unquenchable hypocrisy of a club of wealthy white men. This is a country where black men continue to be shot in the streets by police, even after George Floyd and in full view of the world. So it’s no surprise that one of those wealthy white men, Stephen Ross, was brazen enough to fire Flores after back-to-back winning seasons.
Either Ross or some of his cleanup crew then went wild on the dog whispering network that Flores was “difficult” to work with, something I’ve heard repeated by reporters and commentators here at Seattle.
And yet… the Rooney Rule has been widely heralded outside the sports world as both inspirational and inspirational. When it comes to race, white America is keen to confuse expectation and hype with achievement. But it’s really just the same old, the same old in diversity sheep’s clothing.
That’s why the Rooney Rule isn’t just a football issue, it’s a stain on American society.
Even though Friday afternoon Zoom calls full of colleagues wearing Seahawk gear are the closest thing to following professional sports, chances are you’ve been affected in some way. by the Rooney rule. Dozens of American corporations, from Hilton to Ross to major banks, employ Rooney for CEO and board searches. At least four Seattle-based behemoths — Amazon, Costco, Expedia and Microsoft — have instituted some form of rule.
Amazon management initially resisted the micromanagement requirement when it was proposed by shareholders. In 2018, when Amazon agreed to “consider” women and “minorities” [sic] as trustees, its board was completely white; today, two of the 11 directors are women of color. Then again, even by its own numbers, Amazon’s workforce is nearly as non-white as the NFL’s player rankings, making claims of progress so illusory.
“Consider,” by the way, is something your cash-strapped parents tell you when you ask for a post-grad trip to an exotic location.
The Rooney Rule is a Black Lives Matter sign in the front yard of a white family’s home. It’s the empty promise of American history basically: words without action, like so many tribal treaties, voting laws and other rights, and “I’m with” stickers. White businesses and American nonprofits love to grind words. Mission statements. Pledges of diversity. Land recognitions. And just as a land acknowledgment never ends with “and we give it all back to you”, the Rooney Rule says nothing about reality. hiring a BIPOC candidate.
I have no doubt that many white people are embarking on these word-making endeavors with the best of intentions. But the best intentions do not equal change.
It can also be argued that the Rooney rule is not just an empty gesture, it is actually harmful to those it purports to promote. A seminal harvard business review A study found that a single woman or BIPOC among a group of four job applicants had almost no chance of being hired. The Singularity stands out enough to be considered an outlier instead of an equal competitor. On the other hand, increasing the number of BIPOC candidates to two increases the odds of being hired to 50%, according to the study, while three increases the probability to 67%.
The Harvard Group found similar ratios in NFL hiring, but we’ve seen it play in living color. One of the architects of Kansas City’s innovative and explosive offense, Eric Bieniemy, has been hailed as the NFL’s next best head coach for years. After the New Orleans Saints left him this week, Bieniemy had been “considered” about 15 times. They could rename Passover for him.
Bieniemy makes Flores’ suit but doesn’t belong in it because, like so many cornerbacks who escaped violent collisions with Marshawn Lynch, he made a business decision. BIPOC’s price for just a glimmer of hope in the NFL, unfortunately, is silence. Not enough time has passed to forget a young man named Colin Kaepernick, a black former Super Bowl quarterback who knelt down for an obvious black ball.
There is no “Rogers Rate” in a league that respects a white quarterback in Green Bay who lied about receiving COVID-19 vaccines, ignored protocols, and publicly embraced nonsensical, unscientific conspiracy theories about vaccinations. Not to mention that Aaron Rogers constantly talks about his employers.
Flores overcame great odds to put himself in a position to become a victim of the system he decided to fight. There were nine head coaching vacancies in the NFL when Flores was hired by the Dolphins; he was the only black recruit. His firing left the league’s only black head coach as Mike Tomlin, who was hired by Dan Rooney, the late Pittsburgh Steelers owner for whom the rule is named but who insisted the rule did not produce Tomlin’s hiring because the Steelers had previously interviewed Ron Rivera, a Latino coach now in charge of the Washington team with a previously racist name.
Just reciting the serpentine ironies takes your breath away.
At just 40 years old, Flores is throwing peas at the NFL shield. Her costume isn’t even a Hail Mary. It amounts to professional suicide, and he knows it.
“In making the decision to file a class action lawsuit, I understand that I risk risking coaching the game that I love and which has done so much for me and my family,” Flores said in a statement. “My sincere hope is that in standing up against systemic racism in the NFL, others will join me in ensuring positive change is brought about for generations to come.”
If true, Flores’ claim that he was offered bonuses for intentionally losing matches could bring down Stephen Ross. It would be a major victory if, for whatever reason, Flores’ legal team acquired all of the internal emails of Washington commanders from which Jon Gruden’s racial trope was leaked.
The NFL will take action when it believes its integrity is at stake; however, his positions on racial issues do not seem to fit into the integrity equation. Flores’ claims that he’s been the subject of mock interviews by Denver and New York seem pretty feasible, but it’s a fantasy to expect the NFL to do more than squirm in short-term discomfort. term.
That is, until the league marches past Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige and Dr. Dre at Super Bowl halftime this Sunday.
Otherwise, the NFL will suffer the same punishment that any corporate executive, bureaucratic head, non-profit organization director, media outlet, film producer or the like suffers when their words about diversity and inclusion are not their bond. . Any rule that doesn’t have consequences isn’t really a rule. It’s just a suggestion.
Also, any entity that needs to invoke something like a Rooney rule is in a state beyond which such an action, even if it has exercised some teeth, can even begin to address itself.
The South Seattle Emerald is committed to maintaining space for a variety of viewpoints within our community, with the understanding that differing viewpoints do not negate mutual respect among community members.
The opinions, beliefs and views expressed by contributors on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and views of Emerald or the official policies of Emerald.
Glenn Nelson, a contributing columnist, is a Japanese-American journalist and lifelong resident of South Seattle who founded The Trail Posse and has won numerous national and regional awards for her writing on race. follow him @TrailPosse on Twitter or @TheTrailPosse on Instagram.
📸 Featured Image: Photo by Alena Veasey/Shutterstock.com
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