Damar Hamlin’s Collapse Highlights the Violence Black Men Experience in Football

Millions of people watched as a player in the National Football League performed a seemingly routine tackle during a Monday Night Football game. Hamlin fell to his feet and then died. The players from his team, the Buffalo Bills, and the opposing team, the Cincinnati Bengal, formed a tight huddle around him as medical personnel tried to revive him. Hamlin's heart stopped working and he was taken to the hospital.

The scene was terrible for both its regularity and its exceptionality. The scariest part of this is that the hit was not frightening. It looked frightening. The ordinariness of men running into each other at full speed is seen as a normal part of the American game.

The sport has always been affected by this type of violence. Black players are more likely to be affected. Black men are underrepresented in positions of power on the football field. Almost half of college football players are black, and non-white players account for 70% of the NFL. The process of racial stacking is used to separate athletes by position. Black athletes are at a higher risk when playing.

I have been studying how Black college football players navigate the exploitation, racism, and anti-Blackness that are fundamental to its current system for the last 10 years. It is not new to highlight the violence of football. This sport requires extraordinary athletes who are not ordinary men to perform. These men are like gladiators. The leagues, organizations, teams, coaches, spectators, and fans who benefit from their performance expect them to tough it out when they get hurt and applaud them when they play through these injuries

Football is a spectacle that is boring because hits that cause injuries are a constant occurrence and spectators are desensitized to it. When a player's physical limits are exceeded, consumers of the sport are shocked. The people with a vested interest in professional football rationalize excessive violence in this structured space, as well as the ones that encompass college, high school and peewee play, all because they assume that rules, equipment, and regulations exist to prevent death. This is a lie. While this form of entertainment has been normalized, Hamlin's injury shows that ordinary violence has potentially deadly consequences and highlights how Black men's athletic labor sustains this brutal system.

Financial stakeholders value Black bodies for their productive potential and physical prowess on these playing fields. The league encourages and facilitates rigorous training and disciplining so players can execute seemingly impossible corporeal demands. I am not aware of any research that compares the rate of injury between black and white athletes.

Black athletic performance is a major factor in the success of the NFL. The most valuable professional sports league in the world is the most popular sports league in the US. The league has exploited its black players for a long time. The league admitted to using race norming in settlements for concussion-related injuries. Brian Flores is a former head coach. The anti-Black practices of the National Football League shouldn't be forgotten.

Critics don't like to argue that athletes at other levels don't have the luxury of high salaries. Professional play cannot be separated from college play since this is where talent is cultivated. The college system thrives on athletes' labor through a power dynamic that sociologists call "status coercion," as coaches manipulate and exploit players' work to extract value that ultimately leads to revenue for almost every entity involved. Some college players end their careers before they even start due to injuries. There isn't much support for players to imagine themselves outside of their athletic identities.

The most recent example was in the fall of 2020 during the first season of play. Football play would go on. If those players hadn't taken the field, athletic they would have risked their health with an unpredictable and sometimes deadly virus to play a high-contact sport in almost empty stadiums to satisfy their universities.

These situations show how organizations, administrators and fans dismiss each player's personhood, strip them of their humanity and reduce them to mere bodies. Football athletes don't deserve this kind of treatment. They shouldn't be expected to play after experiencing trauma. To dismiss the almost certain breaking down of their bodies as just part of the game is a process of objectification and commodification that favors the player over the person. The system is anti- black.

The current football season will go on despite Hamlin's injury. The Super Bowl in February will be followed by the scouting combine in March, the draft in April, and team training camps during the summer, all to prepare for the season. Without players the game cannot continue. The infrastructure of the whole system depends on their continued participation. Structural shifts must occur so that the gladiators are cared for in a way that respects their humanity, if we expect them to return to the field.

The views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those ofScientific American.