02/11/2025
On Tuesday, it was reported that the N.F.L. would switch one of the slogans stencilled on the edge of the end zone during Super Bowl LIX from “END RACISM” to “CHOOSE LOVE.” It was also announced on Tuesday that Donald Trump would be attending the game, though the league has denied that the timing of the decision to change the slogan had anything to do with Trump’s visit.
The slogan was part of the Inspire Change initiative that the N.F.L. launched in 2019, after Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem in protest of racial injustice and police brutality. After George Floyd was murdered by a police officer, in 2020, the N.F.L. broadened its efforts to promote diversity and inclusion. Around the same time, many companies also took measures to institute policies to promote D.E.I. “What was a little surprising is that some of those companies looked to the N.F.L., of all places, as a model,” Louisa Thomas writes.
The league’s most prominent D.E.I. policy is known as the Rooney Rule, which was established in 2003, and required clubs to interview at least one minority candidate before choosing a head coach. The rule quickly became synonymous with the idea of the diverse-candidate slate. Barack Obama touted it when he was President. An investigation found that many entities cited the Rooney Rule as an inspiration for their own policies to promote diverse candidate pools.
But that was before the Trump Administration blamed D.E.I. for everything from the California wildfires to the fatal plane crash in Washington, D.C. Under pressure, scores of companies have curtailed their D.E.I. efforts or abandoned them altogether. But, this past Monday, the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell made it clear that the league was still committed to its diversity measures. “At a moment when the landscape is shifting, violently, Goodell’s comments are one small way of protecting those ideas,” Thomas writes. Read about the stakes of the N.F.L.’s diversity efforts under the Trump Administration: https://newyorkermag.visitlink.me/bRKRhb
