There’s a “Two Americas” second brewing within the NFL’s AFC Divisional playoff matchup Sunday (Jan. 19) between Lamar Jackson’s Baltimore Ravens and Josh Allen’s Buffalo Payments. And it begins with what ought to seem to be no large deal on the floor: a Black quarterback versus a white quarterback.
There was a day after we have been starved for Black quarterbacks within the NFL. We had Warren Moon, who was good however (regardless of what previous Black males attempt to inform us) not generationally nice. Doug Williams led Washington to the Tremendous Bowl in 1988. He was even named Tremendous Bowl XXII’s Most Beneficial Participant, however he obtained damage and misplaced his beginning job the subsequent yr. He by no means began one other sport for the remainder of his profession.
It was laborious to interrupt via as a Black man who performed QB, however that’s not the case anymore.
The NFL has modified…kinda. Black head coaches are nonetheless in brief provide (as Brian Flores’s lawsuit explains), however we’ve got a humiliation of riches in the case of Black males who throw the soccer. Patrick Mahomes, Russell Wilson, C.J. Stroud, Jalen Damage, and, maybe most controversially, a dude who clearly goes to a barbershop with a “z” substituting for an “s” in its title and who’s the QB for a group in one of many Blackest cities in America.
Lamar Jackson has been maligned by the sports activities media at the same time as he’s been named the Most Beneficial Participant within the NFL in 2019 and 2023. However the man that many have stated is a legitimately nice QB is, unsurprisingly, Allen, a white man who performs for one of many whitest fan bases within the NFL.
Some have known as him unstoppable. Others have stated that the scheme the Payments are working is fooling the NFL. Then there may be the ridiculous Colin Cowherd who known as him the biggest QB of all time. You’ll most likely be proper in case you thought that the bubbling reward of Allen has to do with him being one of many final genuinely good and constant white quarterback within the NFL.
The reality is that the soccer media has at all times had a factor for QBs who lack melanin.
So what we’ve got arising this weekend is on par with Muhammad Ali versus Chuck Wepner in 1975, Gerry Cooney vs. Larry Holmes in 1982, Larry Chicken versus Magic Johnson in 1985. In every of those matchups, race — and racism — led the dialog. Every man was there to win their respective matchup, however they have been additionally saddled with preventing for the supremacy of their skinfolk. I shudder to consider the shitstorms they’d’ve needed to endure if the web was a factor then.
Allen, the good white soccer hope in a sea of Black quarterbacks and Lamar Jackson, arguably, essentially the most unapologetically Black QB within the sport are going to face off this Sunday. (I do know that Mahomes is nice. However let’s be sincere, he likes to affiliate with Trump-supporting white ladies, so he loses some factors.)
This can be a sport that has the potential to point out us that there are racial fault strains in the case of sports activities fandom. Not everybody from Buffalo is white, however, with out query, the Payments Mafia overwhelming use suntan lotion in the summertime. (And don’t write to us saying that there are Black folks in Buffalo. We’ve heard of Rick James and Benny the Butcher.)
When Black folks root for a Black athletes and white of us root for white athletes, racism is just not at all times at play. It might be happenstance. However when white of us root in opposition to a Black athlete, there’s a 95.7 % likelihood that racism is concerned.