Between Urban Meyer getting caught with a young blonde and Jon Gruden calling Roger Goodell a F*ggot, there was another controversy that had social media in shambles.
Comedian Dave Chappelle did a comedy special called “The Closer,” and one of the bits was him talking about rapper DaBaby was only canceled after he talked about gay and trans individuals, and no one cared that he shot a black man to death in a North Carolina mall.
There is some disagreement on if DaBaby shot the man in self-defense or not, but that wasn’t the point of the joke, which isn’t really a joke, but more speaks to where we are in society. You probably never heard about the DaBaby shooting, but Elton John talked about his Rolling Loud comments. This is about excusing DaBaby’s action but more about exploring the reactions to certain ISMs.
I have stated many times in the past that RACISM is the ism that people, especially white people in power, care about the least. They feel like if they do a hashtag or have Alicia Keye sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” that is enough.
What is happening to Jon Gruden is a perfect example of this.
The NFL claims to support social justice, but putting slogans on the back of helmets isn’t, but they assume black people are stupid enough to fall for it. When Gruden’s emails came out about NFLPA Director DeMaurice Smith calling him Michelin tire lips and questioning his intelligence, that should have been a firable offense right at that moment, but the Raiders and all of Gruden sponsors did absolutely nothing. In fact, a campaign was started to make it not seem that bad and spoke on how Gruden should be forgiving.
Here is how I know that if the additional emails weren’t released, Gruden would still be the coach of the Raiders today.
The league said last week that it shared emails with the Raiders in which Gruden made derogatory comments.
Gruden told ESPN on Sunday that the league was reviewing emails in which he criticized Goodell and explained that he had been upset about team owners’ lockout of the players in 2011 when some of the emails were written. Gruden said in that interview that he had used an expletive to refer to Goodell and that he did so because he disapproved of Goodell’s emphasis on safety, which he believed was scaring parents into steering their sons away from football.
Last Friday, the Raiders knew exactly what was in the other emails, but instead of firing Gruden immediately, they let him speak to ESPN and coach on Sunday. Everything was set up for Gruden to stay the coach of the Raiders if no other emails were leaked.
So, racist emails getting leaked were ok. They could overcome that because who cares about black people’s feelings in the grand scheme of things, but when the homophobic emails leaked, that is when Gruden was immediately forced to resign, he was taken down from the Bucs Ring of Honor and all his sponsored abandoned him.
The Bucs, the sponsors, and the Raiders had already seen Gruden in 4k speak about a black man in power like he was an inferior human, and they weren’t going to do anything.
That says a lot about the NFL and our country as a whole.
Flip the pages for the racist emails.