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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Opinion: New Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel doesn’t owe anyone an explanation about his Blackness

USA TODAY
2022-02-08

Mike Freeman, Race and Inequality Editor–Sports

When I saw that Mike McDaniel was hired as Miami Dolphins coach, and the scarily ugly racial twist the hire started to take on social media, the first person I thought of was my daughter.

The McDaniel hire, and subsequent conversations, focused on a central question: what is Black?

And it comes at a time in American history where race is everything. It’s always been everything but the influence of the white nationalist former President is still strong. He inspired a group of mostly white supremacists to storm the Capitol. Not coincidentally hate crimes have risen in recent years. In other words, the uglier parts of racism are making a comeback like the hockey-mask wearing Jason from Friday the 13th.

It’s impossible not to put the McDaniel story in this context.

As for my girl, she is a dream of a daughter: smart, funny, and a stunningly good athlete. My daughter, like McDaniel, is biracial, and she looks white. With straight, blondish hair and blue eyes. Her looks, combined with my dark Black skin, have led to some staggeringly racist moments when we’re in public, since apparently people don’t know how genetics work. Once, a white woman thought I was her babysitter. Another thought I was her driver. “Are you her chauffer?” she asked…

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New Miami Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel: ‘Extremely proud’ to be biracial

ESPN
2022-02-11

Marcel Louis-Jacques, Miami Dolphins Reporter

MIAMI — Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel, clarifying comments this week in which he said he identified “as a human being,” affirmed that his racial background is not something he simply identifies as — it’s what he is.

“First and foremost, I’m biracial. My mom’s white, my dad’s Black. I’ve been extremely proud of that my whole life,” McDaniel told ESPN on Friday. “It is a unique experience, being a race and then fully acknowledging that most outside observers, when they perceive you, they identify you as something other than the race you are. When you’re younger and that is happening, it’s very, very confusing.”

The Dolphins introduced McDaniel as their 14th head coach this week. During a news conference Thursday in Miami, McDaniel was asked what his experience was growing up and whether his success can serve as an example for people with similar backgrounds…

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“Colin in Black & White” writer on Kaepernick’s parents & awakening: “They didn’t see him as Black”

Salon
2021-11-28

D. Watkins, Editor-at-Large

Michael Starrbury appeared on “Salon Talks” to discuss how he wants to increase awareness of privilege and reality

Back in 2016, the superstar NFL quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, Colin Kaepernick, had become so fed up with racism, police violence against Black and Brown people, and the many injustices woven into the fabric of America, that he decided to begin his own silent protests, by taking a knee during the singing of the National Anthem.

Since then, Kaepernick, 34, has been allegedly blackballed from the NFL, with every team refusing to sign him, even though he is arguably better than half of the quarterbacks in the league. He filed a lawsuit against the NFL for discrimination and won an undisclosed amount of money and then smoothly transitioned toward his second act as an activist. He started Kaepernick Publishing company, donated to grassroots organizations all over the world and launched the Know Your Rights Camp so that young people from improvised areas can get the resources they need to learn about the many types of racial injustices in America, challenge the system and become the next generation of leaders.

Taking a knee during the anthem has bought Colin Kaepernick more hate than any of us could have probably imagined – from him being a constant target for conservative media to President Donald Trump calling him and other NFL anthem protestors who followed his lead a “sons of a bitch” just because they wanted to use their platform as a vehicle for raising awareness. Michael Starrbury, who was a writer on Netflix’s Emmy-nominated series “When they See Us,” had the difficult job of not only researching the impact of Kaepernick’s protest, but tying his decision to do so with some of the most traumatic incidents from Kaep’s childhood in the new Netflix series “Colin In Black and White.”…

Read and/or watch the interview here.

Very Little Is Keeping Doctors From Using Racist Health Formulas

Wired
2021-10-08

Jyoti Madhusoodanan

Photo-Illustration: Sam Whitney; Getty Images

If nothing in medicine changes, it’s just a matter of time before yet another race-based risk calculator harms people of color.

RECENTLY, TWO LEADING medical associations recommended ending a decades-old practice among doctors: using race as one of the variables to estimate how well a person’s kidneys filter waste out of their bodies. Before, clinicians would look at the levels of a certain chemical in blood, then multiply it by a factor of approximately 1.15 if their patient was Black. Using race to estimate kidney function contributes to delays in dialysis, kidney transplants, and other life-saving care for people of color, especially Black patients.

To make the recent decision, 14 experts spent approximately a year evaluating dozens of alternative options, interviewing patients, and weighing the impact of keeping race in the equation. Their final recommendation ensures the corrected kidney equation is equally precise for everyone, regardless of race.

Yet other risk equations that include race are still being used—including ones that have been used to deny former NFL players’ payouts in a concussion settlement, ones that might contribute to underdiagnosing breast cancer in Black women, and ones that have miscalculated the lung function of Black and Asian patients. Ending the use of race-based multipliers in these and dozens of other calculators will take more than a task force in one medical specialty. It’ll need researchers to not just believe, but act on the knowledge that race is not biology, and for the biomedical research enterprise to implement clearer standards for how these calculators are used. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of time before another tool that wrongly uses race to make decisions about patients’ bodies trickles into clinical care…

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How Patrick Mahomes Became the Superstar the NFL Needs Right Now

GQ
2020-07-15

Clay Skipper, Staff Writer
Photography by: Pari Dukovic

After winning his first Super Bowl, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was supposed to have a straightforward summer: First sign a blockbuster new contract. Then prepare to repeat. But when a pandemic gave way to a protest movement that implicated the NFL, the game’s brightest star began to find his voice—and prove that he’s as adroit off the field as he is on it.

Patrick Mahomes calls right on time. When my phone rings, the area code flashes “Tyler, Texas,” where the young Kansas City Chiefs quarterback grew up. It’s early June and a pivotal point in an already momentous off-season. Whatever he might have expected as he walked off the field in February—a first-time Super Bowl winner, coronation complete, celebration on the horizon—was upended by a generational pandemic. And now, historic protests roil the country. Two weeks have passed since the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, and the 24-year-old Mahomes is still trying to make sense of the moment.

Just a few days earlier, Mahomes had joined more than a dozen other Black NFL stars—Odell Beckham Jr., Michael Thomas, and Saquon Barkley among them—in a powerful 71-second video, calling on their employer to condemn racism. It shouldn’t have been a bold assertion. But, of course, it was. While nearly every big American corporation was addressing the significant work to be done on racial justice and equality, the NFL was being asked to address a particularly egregious track record. This is a league in which 70 percent of players are Black but only three coaches, two general managers, and zero majority owners are; a league in which the response to Colin Kaepernick’s protest of police brutality was to promptly run him out of a job.

This time, though, the reaction was different. Less than a day after the players’ video, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell filmed a clip of his own, offering a point-by-point affirmation of the players’ requests. According to a report from ESPN, a key factor in his swift response was the participation of one young player in particular: Patrick Mahomes…

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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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