Observations-Sincerity

In this time of chaos and rage surrounding the murder of George Floyd, we are seeing something unusual happening. What were once forbidden topics, institutional racism and Black Lives Matter have rapidly become a regular part of public discussions. As a result of that normalization of those topics, we have seen many companies and organizations putting out statements in support of Black Lives Matter, in support of racial equality, and in support of the protests against institutionalized racism. While it is heartening to see that these major institutions and corporations who have traditionally been against any kind of protest and against property destruction come out in favor of the present Black Lives Matter protests, you can’t help but wonder about their sincerity. I cannot know their intents but at the same time my cynical side makes me wonder why are they coalescing around racial equality? Is it the gruesomeness of the video of George Floyd getting suffocated under the knee of Derek Chauvin? Is it possible that we have gone past our collective moral tipping point regarding inequality and racial discrimination? Has corporate America decided that enough is enough? Or are they still playing the cynical public relations game? How can we honestly believe that this radical turnabout from their historical response is sincere?

 The statements and proclamations from institutions and companies are professionally written and crafted in the usual PR way. In fact, they are so professional and risk averse that the statements comes off as trite and soulless.  They hit the major points in a cursory fashion in order to explicitly tell you what they think you want to hear. As I am reading a small sample of these public statements, none of the proclamations have excited me and made me sit up and take notice. Given the lackluster and passionless wordsmithing, the question is: do I believe them? Can I or should I take their statements at face value? Since I have developed into a cynical guy in my old age, I try to determine their sincerity.

 I am seeing if I can detect any amount of sincerity behind those blandly polished words. I am wondering if they are real sentiments, felt deeply in the soul of those purportedly behind the written word or are they mere meaningless gestures, unfeeling and procedural. There are two examples that happened recently in conjunction with the protests that also deserves to be put under the microscope and scrutinized.

The first is the Drew Bree’s apology for his initial video regarding the protests. He had mistaken the purpose of Colin Kaepernick’s act of protest, taking a knee. He unequivocally condemned the act because he believed that it was an act to dishonor the military and the flag: the mythology propagated by the right-wing propaganda machine, which completely ignored the fact that Kaepernick was advised by a former Green Beret, Nate Boyer, to kneel during the national anthem rather than sit on the bench. It seems incredible that Drew Brees, an NFL veteran in a league that is 70% black, could still believe the right-wing propaganda after working, sweating, and toiling with Black men. Either he was being disingenuous as he was playing with these Black men, or he had never discussed the situation with the men that he is supposed to lead. Which is what made me question his sincerity when he immediately apologized for his earlier assertion. The mea culpa came quickly, after a number of sports figures condemned his assertion, in the most emotional and unsparing manners possible. His Saints teammates were brutal in their reply to him, which I suspect may have played a major role in his reversal. So, was Brees sincere in declaring that he is now “woke” and knows better? Or is it because he wants to win, and he knew his chances for winning were disintegrating fast? Or was he looking at his legacy in professional sports? He has always had a great reputation for being a man of integrity and a speaker of truth. He has surely blown that reputation to smithereens in one short video and the apology for that video.

The other example is Roger Goodell’s video statement to the world, admitting that he and the NFL had erred irrevocably when they banned the players kneeling for the national anthem in the aftermath of the Kaepernick protest. It only took him four years to realize that he was in the wrong. Four. Freaking. Years.  He oversees the richest most profitable sports league in north America. The man is responsible for the direction of the league, and it took him four years to admit that he was wrong. I wonder how the owners and television executives feel about Goodell’s lightning fast response. I wonder if they care. I am sure they do not.

Why the turnaround for Goodell? His case is not the same as Brees’ because the time between the initial action and then the reversal was four years. Brees’ case can be directly and quickly attributed to the potential PR disaster. Can Goodell be accused of the same mercenary motivation? The answer is probably. Opportunism and mercenary intentions are always good motivators for those who are weak, even though Goodell had the perfect excuse, he can just do nothing. If he did nothing, and said nothing, no one would have noticed because that was the norm that everyone expected from NFL. Was he making the statement to placate 70% of his workforce? He did not care about them when he banned kneeling, why should he care now?

It all comes down to sincerity. Were the companies sincere when their PR hacks put out the vanilla statements? Was Brees sincere when he made his initial statement? Or was he sincere when he walked it back a day later? Was Goodell sincere when he condemned racial protest? Or was he sincere when he apologized from making his initial mistake, four years in the making.

I cannot say whether any one of them are sincere. I can not read into their hearts and minds to discern truthfulness. I do have my opinions, but they are my opinions and not proven truths. So the questions remain out there. Were they sincere or not?

The answer lies in the long-term actions by everyone who have been doubted. If you are going to talk the walk, they better walk the walk. They cannot just throw their vanilla statements out there and expect it to stick, that time disappeared years ago. They can not just throw money at the problem, although money does help. They must revisit their institutional policies and reinvent them to correct the inequalities that are present in the rules, it does not matter if they are intentional or not. It is time to even the playing field, it is time to eradicate the system of hereditary and racial privilege.

Corporations, Brees and Goodell need to man up, to do as they had promised, to show their sincerity. Not just this week or month or year, but for the rest of their lives.

Sincerity is hard to fake because sincerity has to real.

By the way, this is what a real statement should read like. From the USA Women’s Volleyball NT. No dancing, no weasel words. Straight up declaration.

Say their names: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin….

USA Women’s Volleyball stands for these names and many more. We stand with the families who are grieving over the loss of a son, a daughter, a spouse, a mother, a father, but most importantly a loved one. We stand for Black lives whose civil liberties have been obstructed by systems of institutionalized racism and who have brutally suffered at the hands of police violence. Freedom and Liberty are rights entitled to all American citizens and it is time to talk about why our Black citizens don’t have them. Enough is enough. It’s time for us to grow and change as a nation. We stand, we support, and we will be that change.