On the identical day the Giants misplaced to the Dallas Cowboys on Thanksgiving in what was probably the most watched regular-season NFL recreation ever, an embarrassing picture surfaced of the proprietor of what folks prefer to name America’s Team.
In the image — which is 65 years previous, by the best way — a younger Jerry Jones may be seen standing behind a mob of white college students blocking the trail of Black college students making an attempt to combine a highschool in Little Rock, Ark.
Jones, all these years later, insists he wasn’t a part of the mob, that he was simply wanting on.
Whatever.
The downside isn’t with what Jones did or didn’t do in 1957. The downside is with what he isn’t saying or doing about it now.
To hear Jones inform the story, his solely transgression was defying his highschool soccer coach who had advised gamers to steer clear of the confrontation.
“I frankly was worried about my coach kicking my butt for doing exactly the thing they told us not to do,” Jones advised the Washington Post, which unearthed the picture.
But what Jones didn’t say all these years later was that it was improper and disgraceful for these Black college students to be dehumanized for wanting nothing greater than equal entry to a top quality training.
Instead of addressing the problem head on, Jones did what he pays participant Bryan Anger $3 million a 12 months to do — he punted.
Jones, who’s 80 now, has had loads of alternative to place his highschool expertise in perspective.
If he had been in any respect outraged by the white mob he sneak-peaked in his youth, Jones may need been extra sympathetic when quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee throughout the nationwide anthem to protest racial injustice.
Instead, Jones, one of the highly effective homeowners in all of sports activities, together with with Donald Trump, virtually led the mob towards Kaepernick, and vowed to bench any Cowboy who “disrespects” the flag.
Jones relented, some, when he took a knee along with his gamers in 2017 earlier than a Monday Night Football recreation.
What Jones witnessed in Little Rock might have additionally turn out to be useful with reference to range within the NFL, which was just lately sued over its lack of Black coaches and executives.
Jones agreed the league, 70% of whose gamers are Black, “can do better.” Meanwhile, not one of the eight head coaches he employed since shopping for the workforce in 1989 have been Black.
Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, one other highly effective determine in sports activities, needed to know why he wasn’t requested to weigh in on the Jones image after being bombarded with questions on his former teammate, Kyrie Irving, who was mired in an anti-Semitism controversy.
“I was wondering why I haven’t gotten a question from you guys about the Jerry Jones photo,” James mentioned to the media at a current post-game press convention. “But when the Kyrie thing was going on, you guys were quick to ask us questions about that.”
“I know it was years and years ago and we all make mistakes, I get it, ” James added. “But it seems like it’s just been buried under, like, ‘Oh, it happened. OK, we just move on.’”
Jones, within the Washington Post interview, expressed some remorse about his presence on the highschool steps that day, past incomes the wrath of his coach.
“I’ll be very candid with you, I’ve often asked (myself), ‘Why didn’t you do more?” Jones mentioned. “’Why didn’t you get up and have them come up on the bus and sit rather than standing back there? Why didn’t you do more?’”
Well, now Jones is driving the bus. He isn’t simply watching from the background. He owns America’s Team. There’s much more he can do. Right now.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com