The Washington football team (formerly known as the Redskins and now in search of a replacement name) has hired Jason Wright as team president. Wright becomes the first African-American president of an NFL team. However, there have been African-American coaches and general managers — positions that, depending on what Wright’s duties will be, may be at least as important as team president.
Wright was an NFL running back for several teams. When his playing days were over, he earned a master’s degree from the University of Chicago business school in 2013, and then went to work for McKinsey & Company.
This seems like a thin resume for the president of an NFL team, assuming the position in this case is an important one. Did Daniel Snyder select Wright because he was the best candidate available, or did he select Wright on the basis of race in order to appease his woke critics and the newly woke Roger Goodell?
I don’t know. However, Wright’s statement upon becoming team president suggests that he is a poor hire. Wright said:
We know that when you have diverse teams working together making decisions, you make better decisions. And businesses that are more diverse in their makeup, especially in leadership, get better outcomes over time.
By diversity, I take Wright to mean racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, at least in part.
So construed, his statement is consultant-speak nonsense. The teams that make the best decisions and get the best outcomes are those whose members are selected on the basis of merit as that concept has always been understood — not on the basis of race, ethnicity, or gender.
This, I’m pretty sure, is how all great football organizations — from Paul Brown’s, to Vince Lombardi’s, to Bill Belichick’s — made personnel decisions for all key jobs. Does Jason Wright know something these giants of the game didn’t? I doubt it.
The Redskins’ Washington football team’s starting defense this year will likely include eight to eleven Black players and zero to three Whites. I doubt that, in the name of achieving diversity, Wright will advocate bringing in an Asian and a Latino starter, or making sure that the number of White starters doesn’t dip below three. That would be madness.
Yet, Wright has signaled his intent to make other important personnel decisions this way. In other words, he has signaled his intent to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, and gender — which happens to be illegal.
He thus gives fans of this bad football team yet another reason to reconsider their devotion to it.
