Another Super Bowl Win for Brady, Another Setback for Black America
In 2012, Black Lives Matter resembled a noble movement. Following the murder of Trayvon Martin I saw Black Lives Matter as an organization that would not only discuss the deaths of black men due to police brutality, but more importantly I thought they would seek to shed light on the violence perpetuated on blacks by other blacks, or the disproportionality of abortions among black women.
According the U.S. Department of Justice, 93% of black victims were killed by black offenders between 1980-2008. According to the CDC, black women accounted for 38% of all abortions in the United States in 2016, despite making up just 12% of the female population. These are numbers that I assumed Black Lives Matter would be greatly concerned with.
Fast forward to 2021 and I have finally figured out why the high rates of black on black murders and black babies being aborted doesn’t seem to be of any concern to Black Lives Matter and those who subscribe to their ideology. There is a much more pressing issue facing blacks in America today.
After Tom Brady’s 7th Super Bowl win, Twitter erupted pointing out the blatant, in your face, racism being perpetrated against black quarterbacks (and half black quarterbacks for that matter). According to multiple tweets throughout the week, the fact that Tom Brady, a white quarterback, had the unmitigated audacity to win a Super Bowl against a team with a black quarterback in Black History Month is the most racist thing to happen since Joe Biden’s crime bill.
This miscarriage of justice provoked me to go back and look at previous Super Bowls:
February 1, 2004, the Super Bowl was played in February for the first time. For those of you that are unaware, February is Black History Month. Since 2004 there has been a string of brazen racism against black quarterbacks and coaches during this, most sacred of months.
On February 6, 2005, Tom Brady led the New England Patriots to a 24-21 Super Bowl victory over the Philadelphia Eagles who were led by Donovan McNab, a black quarterback.
In 2013, a Baltimore Ravens team led by Joe Flacco defeated the San Francisco 49ers, whose quarterback at the time was the now infamous, and half-black, Colin Kaepernick.
In 2015, Tom Brady once against committed the egregious offense of beating a black quarterback in the Super Bowl when his patriots beat Russell Wilson, a black quarterback, and the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl 49.
The very next year, on February 7, 2016 the beloved Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos won Super Bowl 50 with a 24-10 victory over the Carolina Panthers, whose quarterback was Cam Newton, a black man.
The most offensive incident of racism however, came in Super Bowl 44.
On February 7, 2010, coach Sean Payton and the New Orleans Saints defeated the Indianapolis Colts. What makes this perhaps the most racist Super Bowl win in NFL history is that the Indianapolis Colts were coached by Jim Caldwell, a black man.
It’s one thing to beat a black quarterback in Black History Month, but to beat a black coach? This single handedly set the black community back 70 years. Following this defeat, we immediately found ourselves facing the same challenges my grandfather faced growing up in the Jim Crow south.
After Black Lives Matter spent all of 2020 uplifting the black community by looting and burning down black businesses and destroying black neighborhoods, I thought we had made progress. Yet on February 7, 2021 Tom Brady (a repeat offender) undid all the racial progress made since the Civil Rights Movement by once again defeating a black quarterback in the blessed month of February.
How can we allow this level of racism to continue to persist in our society?
Simply put, we can’t. I believe It’s time for decisive action to be taken to fix this injustice. Seeing as congress has sought to retroactively impeach President Trump, I say the NFL retroactively strip the New England Patriots, Baltimore Ravens, Denver Broncos, and New Orleans Saints of these Super Bowl titles (but not the Bucs. As a Bucs fan, I must say we’ve suffered enough). This is clearly the only way to begin the healing process within the black community. This single action however will not truly allow black Americans to heal. The NFL must also move to play the Wakanda National Anthem every year before the Super Bowl. Then and only then, blacks in America will be able to truly heal.