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All in Their Heads: Sport Activism and the Fight Against Race Norming in the NFL Concussion Settlement

Lucia Trimbur (City University of New York, USA)

Athletic Activism

ISBN: 978-1-80262-204-1, eISBN: 978-1-80262-203-4

Publication date: 8 August 2023

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the campaign against race norming in the 2013 National Football League (NFL) concussion settlement that caregivers of retired players designed, and it considers how their collective action throws new light on activism in sport. While there is a substantial literature on how individual athletes engage in protest, less work has focused on how families – partners, children, siblings, and parents – of athletes organize as a group to answer back to anti-Black racism in professional sport. I argue that a group of spouses used their position as caregivers to shame the NFL, the presiding judge of the settlement, Class Counsel, and even the Department of Justice into acknowledging not only individual suffering from traumatic brain injury but also of the distribution of that suffering across households. Specifically, the wives group expanded definitions of risk and damage to include not only individual illness but also family and group suffering and demanded inclusion of gendered and racialized aspects of social care. Through their campaign, the group recast what is considered protest in the world of sport and who has the ability to access an activist subjectivity.

Keywords

Citation

Trimbur, L. (2023), "All in Their Heads: Sport Activism and the Fight Against Race Norming in the NFL Concussion Settlement", Montez de Oca, J. and Thangaraj, S. (Ed.) Athletic Activism (Research in the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 17), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 105-122. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1476-285420230000017007

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023 Lucia Trimbur. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited