In February for Black History Month, USA TODAY Sports is publishing the series “28 Black Stories in 28 Days.” We examine the issues, challenges and opportunities Black athletes and sports officials continue to face after the nation’s reckoning on race following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. This is the third installment of the series.
In 2019, global superstar Rihanna was interviewed by Vogue and said something fairly extraordinary: she had turned down the NFL’s request to perform in the Super Bowl halftime show.
“I couldn’t dare do that. For what? Who gains from that?” she said. “Not my people. I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler. There’s things within that organization that I do not agree with at all, and I was not about to go and be of service to them in any way.”
The “organization” she referred to is the NFL.
Rihanna was once anti-NFL
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Go back in time a bit. Rihanna didn’t want to support the NFL because the league was coming off player protests started by Colin Kaepernick, who later was effectively banned by the NFL.
In declining to perform in the Super Bowl halftime show, Rihanna was showing support for the players, who along with Kaepernick, were protesting the systemic racism that infiltrates policing and leads to the deaths of so many Black and brown people. Deaths that we have seen over and over again.
So is it strange that Rihanna is performing in this year’s Super Bowl halftime show? Why, yes. Yes it is.
That’s because the same conditions the players were protesting still exist. In fact, with the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and the killing of Tyre Nichols, among others, an argument could easily be made that those conditions are worse.
‘The organization’
Also, when it comes to the “organization” there hasn’t been significant change, either. The systemic racism that permeates the league, particularly when it comes to coaching, still exists. That discrimination existed when Rihanna declined to do the halftime show and it exists now.
What changed for Rihanna? It’s unclear. One theory is that Rihanna is part of Roc Nation, and Jay-Z’s group is the executive producer of the show. Jay-Z entered into a multi-year agreement, the NFL announced in 2019, “to enhance the NFL’s live game experiences and to amplify the league’s social justice efforts.” To me, Jay-Z may have done the former, but he’s failed attempting to do the latter.
Rihanna’s show will be excellent. It will be stunning. Because she’s amazing.
But make no mistake, despite all of that, she’ll be contradicting herself.
Story Credit: usatoday.com