Abusers not restricted to Black athletes

The average American sports fan typically is quick to judge, uses broad moral brushes in drawing conclusions, has selective ant-length memories, and vainly displays outrage whenever a Black person does something negative, whether speculative or not.

The most recent example is right here in so-called progressive Minnesota, where last week both the governor and a U.S. senator decidedly made it political: Even if he’s found not guilty of child abuse charges, Adrian Peterson has been O.J.’d for life.

Children of all races are abused every day, upon which both Gov. Mark Dayton and Senator Al Franken have been noticeably silent. But when Peterson was indicted for possibly abusing his young son with a

spanking, the two men who are running for reelection this November made an appeal to White women voters by calling for Peterson to be suspended, which the Minnesota Vikings last week backpedaled into doing.

U of M Professor Oliver Williams, a noted expert in domestic abuse issues, told us last week, “My question [is] why were they asking [that Peterson] lose his job. Men are abusive to their partners on a regular basis, but nobody is pitching for them to lose their job unless they are sent to jail.”

Abusers aren’t restricted to only Black athletes: “People who are in business, in law, pastors — people who are nurses, doctors, in law enforcement — you can name all other fields, you can see worse,” says the professor.

Information bubbles nonetheless went on high alert. The White-controlled media has Peterson allegedly either using a switch, a tree branch or limb, a wooden spoon, or the entire California Redwood forest to beat his kid. Meanwhile, why isn’t anyone asking how sealed documents and photos as part of the ongoing investigation suddenly become “must-see videos?”

The “jumping on Black men” or the usual crimmalization of Black male athletes by White media isn’t new, says women issues expert Loretta Ross. “I also think there is something awfully suspicious about holding up so many Black men as villains. There is something really weird that we are not talking about the abuses that White players have done.”

She easily remembers Pittsburgh QB Ben Roethlisberger’s alleged sexual abuse of women several years ago. No one is talking about that,” Ross points out. “It feels very much like open season on Black males. It’s kind of hard to ignore the racial undertones that are here.”

Says Vikings Vice President Kevin Warren, the team’s highest ranking Black front office exec, “The way we view race and sports — I’m not taking sides or saying who’s right or wrong — and the way we view societal issues, there are a lot of things that have been going on in our society for so many years, or have been going on in sports that have been able to be masked.”

Now we are supposed to believe, yet alone expect, that a billion-dollar pro football industry will take seriously domestic abuse and sexual abuse after NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s announcement that all teams are expected to take education awareness classes, when it can’t be truthful in fully admitting that the game has a lasting unhealthy effect on its players long after they stop playing. It can’t even be truthful in whether or not they really saw a security video of a player cold-cocking his soon-to-be wife in a casino elevator earlier this year.

“I think this is more than an NFL problem,” says Crystal Flint, a mother of two sons, on domestic violence and child abuse issues. “Where are the voices for those women in our community that are being abused? Those children that are being abused? Those people are the ones that need to be protected.”

These issues “must be addressed in meaningful ways,” concludes Williams.

Charles Hallman welcomes reader responses to challman@spokesman-recorder.com.