After partnering with rapper Jay-Z ‘s music label Roc Nation, the NFL is trying to make it seem that it cares about black people, or perhaps at least about profiting from them. In its latest attempt to make empathy profitable, the football league used a religious family’s capacity to forgive to further its aim with the release of a PSA Wednesday dedicated to Botham Jean, an unarmed black accountant who was shot and killed in his own apartment by a white Dallas police officer.
In the PSA, Jean's mother, Allison Jean, his sister, Alissa Findley, and his father, Bertram Jean, reflect on Botham’s life and what he meant to his community, in an effort to spread awareness about the foundation his sister created in the slain man’s honor, the Botham Jean Foundation. Allison Jean calls her son "the light in any dark room," while Alissa Findley describes him as "the kindest, sweetest person you could ever know." “He was very particular about the company he kept, so I felt that he was not in harm's way," Allison Jean says in the PSA. Then the sound of sirens interrupts the positive descriptions to explain how Botham, 26, was killed Sept. 6, 2018, by Police Officer Amber Guyger, who wasn’t named in the PSA. Guyger was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of murder. She testified in court that she thought she was walking into her own apartment when she mistook Jean for an intruder and fired.
"Botham was in his apartment watching football, eating ice cream, and the officer came in and killed him," Alissa Findley says in the PSA. The next shot in the video is of Botham’s parents sitting side by side. "Botham was everything to us,” Bertram Jean says. “I just can't do without him being here." Jean’s father says he looked forward to one day seeing his son get married and have children of his own. "Life is not sweet anymore," he says. Although Allison Jean says that she hopes one day "our black boys are not seen as a threat," the PSA focuses mainly on positivity, forgiveness, and unity, all very politically correct messages in the conversation about stopping racial injustice.
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Lee Merritt, an attorney representing the Jean family in a civil suit against Guyger and the city of Dallas, called the PSA and the effort behind it "a compromise where no one anticipates universal support." "It is not the progress that I hoped for … but it is progress," Merritt said. Make no mistake about it: The NFL has been decidedly less willing to partner with more outspoken figures in the same fight, such as Colin Kaepernick, the free-agent quarterback practically banned from the NFL for taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality. The football league’s alleged dedication to racial justice doesn’t even extend to its own executive leadership. Although the league employs mostly black athletes, there were only two people of color among the NFL's principal owners in 2018, according to CNN. So when I see the billion-dollar sports league tweeting, “We are in this together” and “#EveryonesChild,” understand why I’m hesitant to call it anything other than the NFL’s latest opportunity to profit off the backs of black men.