Around the NFL Championship Weekend

[ashvirtually]

Sherman's appearance at that particular moment - having just saved the game, adrenaline roaring through his system, dreadlocks lashing his shoulder pads - was not a comforting image for (white) football fans. What he said was ridiculously confrontational and a rejection of what we like to view as "sportsmanship." We don't like to see that. But as one sportswriter observed, just what do you expect when you grab these guys coming off the field - a field in which extreme and dangerous violence is commonplace, necessary, and admired? These guys are pretty amped up.

My personal experience with racism - as a black man observing it in white society - is that it usually isn't of the activist/advocacy, white-power type. Usually, it is instead a banal and thoughtless assumption, made a priori, fundamental to the worldview, but out of sight, a forgotten brick in the wall. It's mental furniture, and the people who think that way would be enormously offended if you suggested that this forgotten assumption is actively informing the way they think.

The bell is often being rung, but it's mostly not deliberate and they don't hear it. If they did, most would certainly adjust their language.

But trying to get them to hear it is very, very difficult.

Richie Incognito was often referred to as a "thug" from what I saw and heard. And worse. He deserved it. Probably still does. Sherman's comments weren't thuggish, IMO. Sherman is brash. He's outspoken. I don't find anything he said particularly objectionable, and knowing the history and how that game went between he and Crabtree it's even less so. But people generally don't wait to hear even most of the facts before leaping to conclusions, it seems (SEE: posters aplenty the last few pages). Sherman's mouth was running, and so he's wrong. For some of them, he's wrong because he's black. For others, he's just wrong for talking trash after a game.

I think we can all agree that the proper term for Richard Sherman is "asshole". This is a race neutral term. Or maybe not. As I said, and others have observed, it was a particularly intense moment.

I think his apology was more than sufficient.