NFL Was Doing What?

The NFL has been engaging in "Race Norming" in evaluating players for brain damage from concussions.

To the uninitiated, race norming means that the Football league was assuming that Black people were stupid when evaluating players for impairment from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Gee, racism much?

The NFL and the lead attorney for about 20,000 former players on Wednesday both promised to end “race-norming” — a controversial practice that curves Black players’ cognitive test scores with data that assumes a lower level of function — as part of the payout process in the $1 billion-plus settlement of class-action concussion litigation against the league.

The statements from the NFL and attorney Chris Seeger came as the practice of race-norming in the settlement payout process, first brought to public attention last year in a lawsuit by two former players, has drawn heightened scrutiny in the courts and media.

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The NFL, in its statement, maintained that no discrimination had occurred in the administration of the settlement, finalized in 2017, which has paid more than $800 million to more than 1,000 former players diagnosed with dementia, Alzheimer’s, and other brain-related diseases. But U.S. District Judge Anita Brody, who has overseen the settlement, has been so troubled by the revelation of race-norming that she took the unusual step of appointing a mediator earlier this year to investigate.

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The use of race norms in the NFL’s concussion settlement payouts first came to light last August, when two former players accused the league in a lawsuit of discriminating against hundreds — and potentially thousands — of Black former players. In their suit, former players Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry alleged that race-norming prevented them from getting settlement payouts. In Davenport’s case, he claimed that a doctor initially diagnosed him with dementia, but the NFL appealed and demanded his test scores get curved using race-normed data, which resulted in a reversal of the diagnosis.

Clearly the goal here was to maximize profits at the expense of black players.

Come to think of it, "Maximize profits at the expense of black players," could be the motto for the NFL.