‘Race norming’ is bigotry that began with good intentions | Kenan Malik

The NFL's scandalous practice of refusing payouts to brain-injured black players was rooted in systematic' racism

The NFL, American football's professional league, is to abandon the practice of race norming" in assessing compensation for former players with brain injuries. It's the assumption that black players have lower cognitive functioning than white ones, an assumption that made it harder for them to prove they had suffered a deficit through brain trauma and so qualify for a payout. Two former players, Kevin Henry and Najeh Davenport, had sued the NFL, having been denied compensation that they would have received had they been white.

The treatment of black people as cognitively less able is straightforward bigotry and draws on a long racist history. The irony, though, is that race norming was introduced as an anti-racist measure and as part of affirmative action programmes.