Kansas Crimson

NewtonHawk11 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:21 pm Kind of had same thought. While he's dynamic on the field and a leader in the locker room, he's been pretty quiet in things going on outside of football. As the article states, he was not vocal, but being just the 5th black QB to start in the Super Bowl, he understands the weight and value that his words are.

Plenty of Chiefs fans that pack Arrowhead Stadium that do not approve of what Mahomes did, but he showed he doesn't care and good for him.

CrimsonNBlue wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:44 pm Mahomes is the first black player to start QB for the Chiefs other than Warren Moon starting one game for the Chiefs at the end of his career.

NiceDC wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:57 pm

CrimsonNBlue wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:44 pm Mahomes is the first black player to start QB for the Chiefs other than Warren Moon starting one game for the Chiefs at the end of his career.

I was told when I was younger (not by a liberal, but actually a conservative at the time, so it always stuck with me) that the reason why so many QBs were white was because white fathers were more likely to be youth football coaches. So the fathers would train and want their kids to be the QB (or able to work more closely at home with their sons to groom to be a QB), and unless an athlete is uber athletic, most players stayed into their positions as they graduated from Pop Warner to Middle School to High School to College ball. I was told that 20-25 years ago or so when I played, and it always stuck with me. I think it's also a great analog about what systemic racism is.

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:14 pm

NiceDC wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:57 pm

CrimsonNBlue wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:44 pm Mahomes is the first black player to start QB for the Chiefs other than Warren Moon starting one game for the Chiefs at the end of his career.

I was told when I was younger (not by a liberal, but actually a conservative at the time, so it always stuck with me) that the reason why so many QBs were white was because white fathers were more likely to be youth football coaches. So the fathers would train and want their kids to be the QB (or able to work more closely at home with their sons to groom to be a QB), and unless an athlete is uber athletic, most players stayed into their positions as they graduated from Pop Warner to Middle School to High School to College ball. I was told that 20-25 years ago or so when I played, and it always stuck with me. I think it's also a great analog about what systemic racism is.

Is it systemic racism, or is it systemic nepotism?

CrimsonNBlue wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:17 pm GM's, coaches and QB's have all been overwhelmingly white. That's no coincidence.

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:31 pm

CrimsonNBlue wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:17 pm GM's, coaches and QB's have all been overwhelmingly white. That's no coincidence.

I think racism is a strong contributing factor to why QBs were and mostly white. I don't think there's any question about that. I mean, there are stories of coaches saying it's because black athletes weren't smart enough for the position. That's as racist as it gets.

But, one of the things that often comes up when we talk about racism and white privilege, are often things that are more akin to nepotism, who you know, etc. Some of these fall along racial lines, but some don't.

I do think there's an important distinction that needs to be made between something that benefits whites generally (getting pulled over for speeding) and something that benefits a small minority of whites (a law firm only hiring whites of a certain pedigree). While both are bad, there's a big fundamental difference between them.

That specific example, a father playing his kid at QB, or PG, or as a starting pitcher who plays SS on non-pitching days, is not racist...it's that dad showing favoritism to his kid.

Now, another interesting (probably inflammatory) conversation is what are the reasons more youth coaches are white, and how much of that is racist, how much is cultural, etc. My naive assumption is that racism plays a big role (both directly and indirectly), but it may not be the only factor.

NiceDC wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:28 pm

PhDhawk wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:14 pm

NiceDC wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 1:57 pm

I was told when I was younger (not by a liberal, but actually a conservative at the time, so it always stuck with me) that the reason why so many QBs were white was because white fathers were more likely to be youth football coaches. So the fathers would train and want their kids to be the QB (or able to work more closely at home with their sons to groom to be a QB), and unless an athlete is uber athletic, most players stayed into their positions as they graduated from Pop Warner to Middle School to High School to College ball. I was told that 20-25 years ago or so when I played, and it always stuck with me. I think it's also a great analog about what systemic racism is.

Is it systemic racism, or is it systemic nepotism?

Racism, as white fathers are generally more present and have more free time. Black fathers are 6x more likely to be in prison, and half of black kids live in a single parent household. Present black fathers are less likely to have a job that gives evening leisure hours due to not being historically in office jobs or other white collar work. This is also compounded with generational wealth built on the backs of black folk, and other policies that did not allow black people to scale to a level that for example Irish folks (who weren't considered "white" until the 20th century) have. Irish and black folk shared some of the same discrimination (just some, not nearly the same) but Irish folks, likely due to the color of their skin, was able to break out of the cycle in only a few generations while black folks it's taken hundreds of years.

https://tcf.org/content/commentary/inca ... /?agreed=1

NiceDC wrote: ↑Mon Jun 08, 2020 2:37 pm Also, to tie my above premise to your nepotism to racism, I am assuming for this that all coaches who coach their sons, black and white, are nepotistic. Then the discrepancies are in part due to lack of black fathers who are coaching their sons.

Anecdotally, I played from third grade to high school, and I never had a black assistant coach, let alone coach. I did play exclusively in Kansas, which is less diverse, but I did have black teammates.