Many of his former
players seemed to think so. Eagles Cornerback Brandon Boykin made headlines
commenting that, “Chip Kelly is not comfortable with grown men of our culture,”
essentially meaning the black culture that exists in NFL locker rooms. Boykin
was among several other players including but not limited to Lesean McCoy,
Desean Jackson and assistant coach Tra Thomas.
Jason Whitlock, ESPN
Senior Writer discussed Kelly’s problem and made some great points. He
investigated the makeup of Kelly’s coaching staff. These were the people he
chose to work closely with, people who he would need to consult when dealing
with a problem. Whitlock discovered that only six out of the twenty- three men
Chip Kelly decided to hire were black, and of these men none held positions of
authority. Every black coach was merely an assistant position coach, essentially
an assistant to an assistant. According to Jason Whitlock, this is far from
normal in today’s NFL. Teams today take a proactive approach building a culture
of diversity and openness within their hierarchy. This being said organizations
are far from perfect and room for improvement still exists.
The culture of doubt
and bias Chip Kelly created in Philadelphia is inexcusable in 2016. Not only is
it ignorant but it also just won’t work. Your team won’t be as successful as it
should be and players and people around the league will punish you for it, as
they should.
I don’t know whether or
not Chip Kelly is a racist. What I do know is that Kelly needs to take a step
back and think more seriously about the culture he creates. He knew that
players were uncomfortable with the environment he created and did nothing to
change it. Whitlock makes an interesting statement that applies here. He said,
“We all have biases. Smart, self- aware people recognize this fact and try to
surround themselves with a diverse group of people capable of challenging their
biases.” Chip Kelly was recently fired by the Eagles and then hired by the San
Francisco 49ers. It will be interesting to see how handles his new situation,
given the lessons he should have learned by now.
This is an issue that can be seen in many different settings.I agree that it is ignorant to create a team (in sports or in an office setting) of only "like" thinkers. In doing this, people that would bring different cultures, and thus ideas are excluded. This eliminates the creativity and different skills that would be brought to the table. Furthermore, this sort of discrimination limits the ability of others to relate to the team/product. Having a diverse environment enhances results. This is something that people should have learned by now, but racism is still a prominent factor in society today.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, within the United States, to be outwardly racist is highly disapproved of, yet it does not mean that racial prejudice and discrimination have been completely eliminated from American society. Chip Kelly is living proof that past ideas about race, which used structural differences to deem blacks inferior to whites, have been deeply ingrained in society and still affect African Americans. While Kelly has never announced himself as a racist, his actions do infer a racial bias. In my opinion, once Kelly was fired from his position as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, it would have further progressed America towards recognizing the need to create a culture of diversity among professional teams and the society as a whole, but unfortunately his new position with the San Francisco 49ers has made me aware of the United States’ difficulty to deconstruct racial ideas.
ReplyDeleteAlexa I do agree with you that Chip Kelly’s hire in San Francisco shows us that we still have a long way to go before our country fully acknowledges the extent of our racial bias, but I think his firing from Philadelphia shows how far we have also come as a community. We see that to be successful in business in todays society you have to be willing to work with a variety of different people not just like minded people. This means that to accomplish goals such as winning a Super Bowl, you must be committed to diversity and expanded the rage of influences around you. We see in Philadelphia, because Chip Kelly was not willing to listen to his players and only hired coaches like him, they were not able to successful no matter how great of a system he had up there. Until Chip Kelly realizes that the people on his team are not all white and he can not win without them, he will not be able to successful in the NFL. A league that encapsulates a variety of cultures from around the country not just the one in the majority.
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