Rep. Burgess Owens of Utah accused the National Football League and Commissioner Roger Goodell of hypocrisy on Newsmax Friday, saying that it embraces Black Lives Matter and other race equity issues while using race-norming to settle concussion claims.
Owens, 69, a first-term Republican congressman who played 10 seasons in the NFL including winning a Super Bowl with the Oakland Raiders, decried the use of race-norming by the league. But he also accused it of hypocrisy by supporting Black Lives Matter and the violence associated with its demonstrations last summer that resulted in destroyed Black businesses.
''One of the worst types of racist that I grew up with, not the ones that put it in your face where they work, it was the ones who smiled at your face, give you nice hug, then stabbed you in the back,'' Owens, the third Black person to earn a scholarship to the University of Miami to play football, told "Greg Kelly Reports."
''And then they love the fact that you see your demise. So that's what we're dealing with. These are people that have a smiling face and out doing damage to our race, not only here, but every summer as you see Black business going down. These are the people that support those organizations that burn them down, so it's across the board and we need to look at who they are and get rid of them.''
The NFL announced earlier this week that it would halt using race-norming for concussion claims, the practice of assuming a lesser cognitive function for Black players in determining compensation for those who said that repetitive head injuries suffered in the NFL resulted in chronic maladies.
Owens pointed the finger at Goodell, saying if he wasn’t aware, he should have been.
''The fact that he seems to be tone deaf, the guy deals with Blacks across the board in the NFL — right now the NFL is 70% Black Americans — or anyone today to be leading [an] organization like that to come down and put compensation in place based on skin color is a racist, period,'' Owens said.
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