Mixed Race Studies

As N.F.L.’s Quarterback Guard Changes, Patrick Mahomes Wins Second M.V.P. Award

The New York Times
2023-02-09

Kris Rhim, Sports Reporter

Mahomes, Kansas City’s quarterback, won football’s top honor for the second time, establishing his place atop a new generation of passing talent.

PHOENIX — Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, won his second Most Valuable Player Award on Thursday night, for his work in perhaps the most challenging season of his career, cementing himself as the leader of a new wave of talented young quarterbacks.

Mahomes is the first Black quarterback to win the league’s highest individual honor twice, having previously won the award after the 2018 season, his first as a starter.

In the past 20 seasons, the award has been won by the generation-defining quarterbacks Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers 12 times, with no other player repeating as M.V.P. With the retirements of Manning, in 2016, and Brady this season, Mahomes leads an emerging class of young passers defining the N.F.L...

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Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes proud to be part of first Super Bowl with two Black QBs

Chief’s Wire
USA Today
2023-02-01

Ed Easton Jr., Kansas City Chiefs Beat Writer

We are just under two weeks away from Super Bowl LVII as the Kansas City Chiefs prepare to battle the Philadelphia Eagles.

The game will feature top seeds from both conferences and, for the first time in league history, two Black starting quarterbacks. Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts will make history when they step onto the field in Arizona—a special moment considering the strides the position and league have taken to improve diversity…

…Speaking to Carrington Harrison on 610 Sports Radio show “The Drive” during his weekly check-in, Mahomes opened up about the cultural impact of the game and the history of the Black quarterback.

“I am proud. We came a long way,” said Mahomes. “As I’ve gotten into the NFL and learned more about the history of the Black quarterback, I’m happy that we’re going to be on this stage. It couldn’t be against a better guy than Jalen Hurts… I’m glad that we’re going to be able to represent the Black quarterback in the biggest game of them all.”…

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Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes responds to recent, unfounded criticisms of Black QBs

Chief’s Wire
USA Today
2022-07-30

Ed Easton Jr., Kansas City Chiefs Beat Writer

The career of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has been progressing well since entering the league in 2017. He’s been named league MVP, he’s won a Super Bowl, and he’s secured one of the highest-paying contracts in sports history all before turning 26 years old.

Mahomes is already one of the most accomplished Black quarterbacks in NFL history. The topic of race has never been something Mahomes has shied away from in interviews or press conferences. He’s been outspoken about racial injustice and the need for change…

…Following the Chiefs’ Friday training camp practice, Mahomes was asked whether he felt Black quarterbacks are evaluated differently in the NFL. His response was about as perfect as you could expect.

 “I don’t want to go that far and say that,” said Mahomes. “I mean obviously, the Black quarterback has to have a battle to be in this position that we are, to have this many guys in the league playing. I think every day we’re proving that we should’ve been playing the whole time. We’ve got guys that think just as well as they can use their athleticism, so it always is weird when you see guys like me and Lamar (Jackson), Kyler (Murray) kind of get that on them and other guys don’t, but at the same time we’re going to go there and prove ourselves every day to show that we can be some of the best quarterbacks in the league.”…

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Colin Kaepernick Campaigns for N.F.L. Return With Pop-Up Workouts

The New York Times
2022-03-27

Emmanuel Morgan

As teams snatch up quarterbacks in free agency, Kaepernick has been quickly organizing workouts around the country and posting them to social media.

LOS ANGELES — In the five years since he last played in an N.F.L. game, Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who ignited an international debate on athletes’ right to protest, has only sporadically surfaced in public. Accepting an award here, or rolling out a Netflix series there, Kaepernick has in those calculated appearances always affirmed that he was “staying ready” for a return to football.

This month, he has taken a new approach, organizing pop-up workouts that are often scrapped together in less than 24 hours in cities across the country. On Friday at U.C.L.A.’s practice facility, most of the receivers who fielded his passes were still in high school or enrolled in junior colleges. Last week in a workout posted to his Instagram account, Kaepernick threw to Seattle Seahawks receiver Tyler Lockett in Arizona, after plotting to meet via Twitter.

In workouts in Atlanta, New Orleans and three other cities, he corralled workout partners with a range of experience through previous connections and word of mouth using the sessions as a public forum to showcase his talents and potentially solicit an N.F.L. audition…

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Colin In Black and White (or For Colored Boys Who Considered Suicide After Cutting Their Braids)

Black Power Media
2021-11-01

Jared A. Ball, Ph.D., Professor of Africana and Communication
Morgan State University, Baltimore

At 00:36:02, Dr. Ball discusses the new Netflix series “Colin in Black and White” about the early life of Colin Kaepernick.

Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes makes his voice heard. He should talk about the Tomahawk Chop

The Kansas City Star
2020-06-15

Dave Helling

Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes recently joined with other NFL players in condemning racism and demanding that the league recognize the players’ right to protest injustice.

“I am Tamir Rice,” Mahomes says in the viral Black Lives Matter video, referring to the 12-year-old African American killed by the Cleveland police.

Mahomes’ willingness to take a stand sent a potent message that resonated far beyond Kansas City. “He has been the MVP of this league. He has won a Super Bowl,” said Doug Williams, a former NFL quarterback who’s African American. “It says a lot that he wanted to be involved in pushing for … change. It was very powerful.”…

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Mahomes’ performance leaves no doubt: Black NFL QB’s have arrived

NBC News
2020-02-04

Curtis Bunn

Patrick Mahomes, 24, of the Kansas City Chiefs became the youngest quarterback to be named Super Bowl MVP. Mike Blake / Reuters

“Mahomes’ performance was uplifting and annihilates the narrative that African American quarterbacks are somehow less capable.”

Doug Williams did it first. Russell Wilson came next. And Patrick Mahomes is now the third African American quarterback to win a Super Bowl, and his explosive performance on Sunday confirmed, if anyone still questioned, that the era of the black NFL QB is upon us.

With the world watching, Mahomes brought the Kansas City Chiefs back from a 10-point deficit in the final minutes, catapulting the franchise to its first Super Bowl win in 50 years, 31-20, over the shell-shocked San Francisco 49ers.

For the first time in a week, there was an athletic performance impressive enough to distract sports fans from the tragic death of NBA legend Kobe Bryant.

“Mahomes’ performance was uplifting and annihilates the narrative that African American quarterbacks are somehow less capable,” said Clint Crawford, an engineer, after getting a haircut at his favorite barbershop in Los Angeles Monday. “He executed when it counted most and demonstrated the kind of toughness and fiery resolve we came to expect from athletes like Tom Brady and Kobe Bryant.”…

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Patrick Mahomes ushers in Era of the Black Quarterback

The Year of the Black Quarterback
The Undefeated
2020-02-02

Jason Reid

With dramatic Super Bowl win, the Chiefs star punctuates spectacular year

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. – The Year of the Black Quarterback has evolved into the Era of the Black Quarterback, because Patrick Mahomes and his contemporaries are just that good.

On sports’ biggest stage here Sunday night, Mahomes emphatically punctuated the NFL’s 100th season – the one in which African American passers shined brighter than at any time previously in NFL history – leading the Kansas City Chiefs to a 31-20 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium. In only his third season and second as a starter, Mahomes added the Super Bowl most valuable player award to the long list of accomplishments in his nascent career. And for a fitting capper to it all, here’s his biggest feat to date: At only 24, Mahomes is the youngest player ever to have both a Super Bowl title and a league MVP award, having been selected the 2018 winner by the Associated Press.

Any scout, coach or player-personnel official worth their salt will tell you there’s no doubt as to who is currently the game’s top player. Mahomes is the face of the NFL and is expected to shatter the mark for the game’s biggest contract soon. Not only does Mahomes, the seventh black signal-caller to direct a team to the Super Bowl and third to win the championship, throw the game’s best deep ball and possess second-to-none improvisational skills, he’s also smart as a whip, tough and a leader beyond his years.

Any scout, coach or player-personnel official worth their salt will tell you there’s no doubt as to who is currently the game’s top player. Mahomes is the face of the NFL and is expected to shatter the mark for the game’s biggest contract soon. Not only does Mahomes, the seventh black signal-caller to direct a team to the Super Bowl and third to win the championship, throw the game’s best deep ball and possess second-to-none improvisational skills, he’s also smart as a whip, tough and a leader beyond his years.

“The best thing about it is you’re showing kids that no matter where you grow up, what race you are, that you can achieve your dream,” Mahomes said during the lead-up to the Super Bowl. “For me, being a black quarterback — having a black dad and a white mom — it just shows that it doesn’t matter where you come from.”…

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Is the Black Quarterback Revolution Going to Last?

The New York Times
2020-02-02

Elena Bergeron

Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs is part of a vanguard redefining the position. But it is a watershed only if it is widespread and persistent.

MIAMI — The N.F.L.’s longtime leading men, the ones with the pizza commercials and the Super Bowl rings, whose names adorn the league’s most-sold jerseys, showed their mortality this season in ways that were uncomfortable to watch.

Tom Brady and Drew Brees didn’t make it through the first round of the playoffs. Aaron Rodgers missed the Super Bowl, too, by losing in a later round. Eli Manning retired, usurped as the Giants’ leader after 16 years. Ben Roethlisberger played like he should be considering it, too.

Together they helmed 12 of the last 18 Super Bowl-winning teams. And all are pushing 40 years old or past it.

Yet their aging out of the game leaves no void, as these playoffs have highlighted the rise of quarterbacks whose savvy and daring have stolen our attention. Russell Wilson’s third-down scramble to survive the Philadelphia Eagles, Patrick Mahomes’s bionic touchdown run for the Chiefs against the Tennessee Titans, Deshaun Watson of the Texans’ magical escape from a sack to beat the Buffalo Bills. Everything that Lamar Jackson did…

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In the End, the NFL Proved Colin Kaepernick Right

The Atlantic
2019-12-12

Jemele Hill, Staff writer

Al Bello / Getty

In pronouncing the outspoken quarterback’s career dead, the league underscored its own unwillingness to let players exercise their own power.

When the NFL commissioner, Roger Goodell, declared yesterday that the league had “moved on” from the embattled quarterback Colin Kaepernick, the finality of Goodell’s tone answered the question about whether Kaepernick would ever play professional football again.

Kaepernick became persona non grata in the National Football League after the 2016 season, during which he protested police violence against African Americans by kneeling during the national anthem. The league then spent more than two years trying to make him go away, but seemed to relent by scheduling a workout for him last month in Atlanta. But that proposed session didn’t happen on the NFL’s terms, and Goodell, in his first public comments about the matter, implied yesterday that Kaepernick had blown his last chance.

“It was a unique opportunity—an incredible opportunity—and he chose not to take it. And we’ve moved on here,” Goodell said at an owners’ meeting in Irving, Texas.

But if Goodell believes that the Atlanta fiasco provided closure to this situation, he’s being horribly naive. The league’s clumsy treatment of Kaepernick only showed what the quarterback’s supporters have been saying all along: The NFL is unwilling to tolerate black athletes’ outrage, outspokenness, and desire to exercise their power—even though all three are entirely justified…

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