An African American women’s group labels it “unacceptable” that the NFL did not include any black women as consultants on its new domestic violence panel.
On September 15, the NFL announced the creation of a new advisory group to help it deal with its response to instances of domestic abuse among players, coaches, and league owners. The effort includes three white women as members of the advisory group.
But while the Black Women’s Roundtable, a group that claims to represent black females of all ages, celebrated the National Football League’s decision to create the advisory panel on domestic violence, it noted the absence of black women for a panel that will examine cases in a majority-black league. African-American women constitute the alleged victims in several of the current cases against players.
The group said in a statement that the “lack of inclusion of women of color, especially black women who are disproportionately impacted by domestic violence and sexual assault; and the fact that over 66% of the NFL players are made up of African-Americans, is unacceptable.”
To counter claims that its domestic violence effort is somehow unbalanced, the NFL noted that it already had two African American women on its leadership team. The NFL’s director of player engagement and education, Deana Garner, and the vice president of strategic development and operations in player engagement, Kim Fields, are both black.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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