I woke up Sunday morning excited for Super Bowl LVI. Okay, not excited for the game—I’m not a fan of football’s glacial pace, the physical damage it does to the brains of its players, the racism of the National Football League, and how the NFL has treated Colin Kaepernick. I like the halftime show, and that’s it.
In my head, I wondered what would happen if one of the halftime show performers, any of them, were to acknowledge Kaepernick or the NFL’s long history of extreme racism. It was just a few days ago when Brian Flores, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, filed a lawsuit claiming the league is “racially segregated” and “managed much like a plantation.” Flores, who is Black, was one of only 20 Black men who’ve coached for an entire season in the NFL’s 102-year history. Seventy percent of the league’s players are Black, by the way.
Of course, the NFL denies that the entire entity is built on the backs of Black men’s bodies while the white men who own the teams build their wealth. But recently, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell did admit that the system is in need of change.
“We’re not doing a good enough job here. We need to find better solutions and better outcomes,” Goodell said at his annual pre-Super Bowl address. Adding, “Let’s find more effective policies. Let’s make sure everyone understands. Let’s make sure that we’re looking at diversity and incentivizing that for everybody in our building.” In other words, maybe if we pay the owners to have a Black coach, maybe then they’ll agree to have one or two.
As I watched the halftime show last night, with performers Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar, and Eminem, I agreed with journalist and author of The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah Jones, when she tweeted that the show was “Def the Blackest halftime show in history.” But I was shocked when I saw Eminem drop to his knee at the end of his performance of “Lose Yourself.” And not because he took a knee and likely defied the NFL’s request for him not to; I was shocked because it was the white guy on stage who did it.
I wasn’t shocked that after the show, the NFL claimed it knew Eminem would take a knee all along and they’d signed off on it. League spokesman Brian McCarthy said Sunday that officials “watched it during rehearsals this week.” He went on to say, “A player or coach could have taken a knee and there would have been no repercussions, so there was no reason to tell an artist she or he could not do so."
Okay, McCarthy, I think we all know what happens when a player takes a knee in the NFL.
So, in case you think maybe you missed it, you didn’t. Not one player from either team or any coach or any of the other performers took a knee. Not during the National Anthem or at any time during last night’s game.
I was shocked in the same way that I was shocked by the fact that Kaepernick has never really been supported by the hundreds of Black NFL players since he first took a knee in 2016 to protest police brutality and social injustice. A San Francisco 49ers quarterback, Kaepernick has been banned from the league ever since he took that historic and defiant stand.
The halftime show talent was produced via a partnership between Pepsi, the NFL, and Jay-Z’s entertainment and sports company, Roc Nation, a deal that was made in the wake of the Kaepernick-launched protests. Dr. Dre also helped produce the show, paying about $7 million out of his own pocket in order to perform.
According to Puck, the NFL asked Dre not to use the lyric from his signature 1999 hit, “Still D.R.E.,” which states that he’s “still not loving police.” Ultimately, Dre used the lyric during the show.
So, in lieu of hiring more Black coaches, or supporting causes highlighted by Kaepernick's knee, the NFL offered Black performers last night. The essence of the word performative.
Roc Nation declined to comment on what Eminem intended to signal by taking a knee.
To be clear, I am not giving Eminem a lot of credit for this allegedly defiant act.
As @LeftSentThis right said, “Eminem taking a knee, as presumably a show of solidarity with Kaepernick while performing in the Super Bowl, for the league that Blackballed him, in a concert likely orchestrated by someone many say backstabbed him, ain’t the ‘rebellious’ act folks are making it seem to be.”
Jemele Hill, a sports journalist who writes for The Atlantic and co-hosts VICE TV’s Cari & Jemele (Won't) Stick to Sports argued that if Eminem was going to make such a bold statement, he should back it up by opening saying why he did it.
"For the record, I think I know why Eminem was kneeling, but if it’s related to Colin Kaepernick, he should say that. Not a criticism. But would be a powerful addition to the conversation," Hill tweeted.
The NFL isn’t just conservative in principle. The Super Bowl halftime show is their biggest moneymaker, and no one’s defiance is going to ruin that.
A decade ago, the NFL took singer M.I.A.to court after she stuck up her middle finger during a 2012 halftime show.
Dr. Dre signed a contract agreeing that he would be financially responsible for anything that happened during the show last night that the NFL didn’t want to happen.
In September, the NFL appeared to be making a slight shift in their support of issues around race and announced they’d allow players to display messages of social justice on their helmets.
“It’s an opportunity to highlight messages that are important to the league, players and personnel, and our communities,” McCarthy said at the time. “We’ve seen tremendous work done by our players to make an impact, and we can increase that through the high-visibility platform that the NFL provides.”
That small allowance was scrubbed for Sunday’s Super Bowl.
So far, all quiet on the Marshall Mathers front. He’s yet to make himself heard on social media or anywhere.