We’re going to start here with a tragedy, and with a president and politics, and work our way to sports. And for those who want to keep their sports wholly separate from politics … well, we’d all like to be able to run the football like Saquon Barkley, but … no. It ain’t happening. So, hold onto your shorts and your objectivity here, because you’ll need both.
It’s blown far past the point where what Donald Trump says is divisive and harmful to many in the country he now leads. He certainly added to that on Thursday when he used a tragic collision of a commercial airliner on approach to Reagan National Airport in Washington and a U.S. Army helicopter on a training mission as a political hammer to denigrate diversity practices put in place, as he said it, by previous [Democrat] administrations.
As Trump was confronted by a White House reporter about his accusation, the president admitted the accident was under investigation.
Said the reporter: “I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.”
Answered Trump: “Because I have common sense. OK? And unfortunately a lot of people don’t.”
It’s easy to presume that Trump might have already known who was in the airport tower, who was flying the commercial jet and who was piloting the Blackhawk helicopter. But, either way, for a president to jump to such a conclusion without having a completed inquiry in front of him is more prejudicial than presidential. And even if he had some of the facts, implying that where a mistake is made, the fault automatically can or should be traced to and placed on some alleged diversity hire is both prejudicial and harmful. Privileged white male hires make mistakes, too, the evidence of that plainly on display these days in the Oval Office.
Maybe some of us are trying to find small bits of positive leadership from Trump. The country needs positivity and hope, after so much partisan division before and during the most recent election. It also needs, as John Lennon sang it, some truth. All we want is the truth.
Where, though, does the country stand if the word diversity is made, as it stands so solitarily accused, the villain? It’s a diverse nation, after all, and, other than keeping certain favored corners in power, what good does it do the country for a majority to run down minorities, for men to run down women? How is that healthy for anyone of any race or ethnicity or gender to view others straight out of the gate with suspicion simply because they are different?
When a president does that, it gives permission for everyone else in advantaged positions to do the same. It perpetuates the idea that it’s OK for company executives, business and team owners, those who do the hiring, to give employment opportunities to those who look just like they do, under the ruse that they are hiring the “most qualified people.”
In many major American sports, head coaches and managers are mostly white, even when a good number of athletes are non-white. It’s always been that way and so it remains. The numbers have gone up and down, undulating through the years, but minorities are most definitely in the minority in positions of leadership.
As of this month, there were 16 Black head football coaches out of a total of 134 FBS programs in the NCAA’s Division I. And while that number has slightly increased in recent years, it’s still only about 11 percent of the total. Black athletes in those same programs number over 50 percent.
There also have been more minority hires at head coach in the NFL, with nine being in place at the start of the 2024 season. Since then, Antonio Pierce was fired after one full season at the helm of the Las Vegas Raiders and Jerod Mayo was fired after a single go-round with the New England Patriots.
According to a study done by USA Today, non-white head coaches in the NFL are more than three times as likely to be fired after one season as white coaches. Examples of coaches who were given more time — Detroit’s Dan Campbell, who went 3-13-1 in his first season in 2021, is a good one — show that being patient can and sometimes does work out. Not for those who are never given the chance.
Raw numbers from USA Today’s project:
Since 2003, when the Rooney Rule, which mandates that NFL teams must interview minority coaching candidates when openings occur, was put in place, “Of the 139 coaches hired … 19 (13.7 percent) were fired after one season in at least one of their stints. Of the 111 white coaches during this span, 11 (9.7 percent) were one and done. Of the 26 non-white coaches, eight (30.8 percent) lasted just one season.”
Football has a long way to go. So does baseball. The NBA has led out in hiring non-white head coaches, with about half the teams in the league being mentored by those coaches. The 2024 NBA Finals featured, for just the third time, two teams with Black head coaches — Boston’s Joe Mazzulla and Dallas’ Jason Kidd.
College basketball, along with collegiate sports across the board are dominated by white head coaches. According to a university study at UCF from a couple of years back, 82 percent of basketball coaches were white, 89 percent of football coaches and 94 percent of baseball coaches. That’s through Divisions I, II and III. Coaches in women’s sports weren’t significantly dissimilar.
So, what are we doing here … in sports, in politics, in American life? Do those numbers reflect in reality the “most qualified people” for the jobs? When teams lose, is that an indication of diversity? When mistakes are made? Do we know that because we have “common sense” and “unfortunately a lot of people don’t”?
Or is it an indication that many white males prefer to hire and give opportunity to those who look like they do? Does anyone who is suspicious that that second sad notion is true lack common sense?
Tragedy is tragedy and what happened in the sky over Washington on Wednesday night is exactly that. We should all mourn with heavy hearts on account of the loss of life in that horrible accident. But hearts should also be heavy over anyone, powerful or otherwise, wanting and willing to so automatically blame diversity for tragedy. That, in and of itself, is tragedy, inside and out of sports.
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