America in different place since NFL first embraced Juneteenth
The entire nation was still reeling from the murder of George Floyd which happened in May of 2020.
His killing triggered massive nationwide protests. There were also conversations. In the streets. In homes. In workplaces. There was introspection. There was pain but also hope. There was the feeling that things could get better. Do you remember that time? Remember how much we talked about unity and care and togetherness? It was all there.
That time feels so, so long ago. America looks different now. There are deepening pools of hate and xenophobia. Reversal of everything accomplished in the past five years. We've taken steps backward in ways few imagined, at a speed few knew possible.
Go back to 2020. Goodell and the league saw what was happening around the country, and knew the NFL needed to change. So, in early June, Goodell announced that the league would recognize June 19, or Juneteenth, as a company holiday.
"This year, as we work together as a family and in our communities to combat the racial injustices that remain deeply rooted into the fabric of our society, the NFL will observe Juneteenth on Friday, June 19th as a recognized holiday and our league offices will be closed," Goodell said in a statement then. "It is a day to reflect on our past, but more importantly, consider how each one of us can continue to show up and band together to work toward a better future."
This was no small thing. It was also part of a larger push by a league to change the views from some of its players who felt the NFL was uncaring, and even hostile toward, the protests led by Colin Kaepernick that started in 2016. After Floyd was killed, the league was forced to take a more empathetic stand, and that's where observing the Juneteenth holiday came in.
Juneteenth is celebrated as the end of slavery in America. The Emancipation Proclamation was established on Jan. 1, 1863, but it wasn't until two years later on June 19, following the end of the Civil War, that newly freed slaves in Texas were told of Abraham Lincoln's directive.
One day after saying it would recognize Juneteenth, the NFL announced an increase in its financial backing of social justice causes to $250 million over 10 years in order to "combat systemic racism and support the battle against the ongoing and historic injustices faced by African Americans."
"The power of this historical feat in our country's blemished history is felt each year, but there is no question that the magnitude of this event weighs even more heavily today in the current climate," Goodell also said in his statement. "Juneteenth not only marks the end of slavery in the United States, but it also symbolizes freedom - a freedom that was delayed, and brutally resisted; and though decades of progress followed, a freedom for which we must continue to fight."
That was then. Look at the nation now.
We don't need to get into all of the details but we are in a frightening place. The country that held such promising conversations following the Floyd protests? It's gone. Replaced by ugliness and fear and federal agents expanding raids to strawberry fields.
There are governmental efforts to destroy anything that has to do with diversity. We are more militarized. We are more divided. And the NFL hasn't been exempt from the pressures to abandon pluralism and diversity. Four years ago, it loudly proclaimed itself DEI advocates. Now, as USA TODAY'S Jarrett Bell wrote in May, the league has stopped its coaching accelerator program, saying it will come back in some reimagined form next year. In burying the program, it looked like the league was succumbing to outside pressure. The NFL vehemently disputes this.
"I realize that people are going to look at this and say, 'These people are backing off,'" Pittsburgh Steelers owner Art Rooney II, chair of the NFL's diversity committee, told Bell. "That's not going to happen. There's nothing I can really do about that perception, except to say that we're still not satisfied with where we are, and we recognize that we still have work to do."
Hopefully Rooney is right.
Five years ago, the league embraced Juneteenth. An NFL spokesman told USA TODAY Sports it still is. The league office will be closed on the 19th, the spokesman said.
It may seem odd to say that something as simple as a closed NFL office on Juneteenth is some sort of progress. But in this country? Now? Unfortunately, it is.
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