Celebrations in black and white
from The Buffalo News, January 4, 2004

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NFL leadership wrong to penalize African-American players for enthusiastic end-zone displays

By ROSS RUNFOLA
Special to The News
1/4/2004

African-Americans have enjoyed great success as National Football League players, both in terms of relative numbers and financial gain. The football professionals with control over players' destinies, however, are disproportionately white. Although approximately 70 percent of all players are black, 100 percent of owners, 87 percent of general managers and 90 percent of head coaches are white.

It is this group of whites in the NFL who make what is essentially a racial and socio-cultural determination of what is acceptable behavior after African-American athletes score a touchdown.

In "Black and White Styles in Conflict," Thomas Kochman suggests there is an inevitable clash between black players and the white NFL leadership over appropriate expressive behavior in the end zone. Most white players are concerned about mastering the technical aspects of the game, a behavioral style that fits within the cultural context of mostly white NFL authorities, according to Kochman. Black culture, in contrast, is reflected by athletes projecting a strong individualistic image in performing with flair and celebrating with unbridled enthusiasm.

While personal display or "hot-dogging" is accepted and even appreciated in most black circles, it is abhorrent to most whites not used to highly expressive and even improvisational behavior. Did ignorance of a different cultural standard, not inherent racism, make the NFL hierarchy curb the expressiveness of black athletes by establishing rules against "excessive" end-zone celebrations?

This problem first found expression when Houston Oilers kick returner Billy "White Shoes" Johnson brought touchdown celebrations to a new level with his highly expressive, wobbly-legged, funky-chicken dancing. Since then a wellspring of criticism against such behavior has raged, largely fueled by the mostly white media and NFL Rules Committee.

The Rules Committee stopped "White Shoes" in 1984 by outlawing excessive end-zone celebrations. In 1988, the Cincinnati Bengals' Ickey Woods debuted his touchdown shuffle. Predictably, two years later, NFL owners voted to ban the dance as an "unprofessional demonstration." To squelch any more forms of highly stylized individual self-expression in the No Fun League, more recent NFL rules state that players showing certain types of expressiveness and emotion will be penalized and their teams fined for any "premeditated celebration."

The white NFL leadership passed this most recent rule in response to the new "prop and premeditated" era. San Francisco wide receiver Terrell Owens ushered it in by pulling a pen from his sock and autographing the football after scoring a touchdown on Oct. 14. Not to be outdone, Joe Horn of the New Orleans Saints, after scoring a touchdown against the New York Giants on Dec. 14, took a cell phone hidden under the goal post and pretended to make a call, presumably to NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue asking how much his fine would be.

On the same day, much-fined Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson held up a sign that read, "Dear NFL. Please Don't Fine me Again!!!!!" (He, too, was fined).
In the only scientific study comparing touchdown celebrations by black and white players, Vernon Andrews found that black players generally responded with higher levels of emotion and expressiveness than white players in key game situations when a touchdown was scored.

Andrews divided celebrations by race into five distinct categories, level one being the lowest level with no expressiveness - such as merely tossing the ball to the referee - and level five being the highest. At level five, the behavior was more planned, expressive and emotional. It included dances, leaping high-fives with teammates, and routines appearing to have been discussed or practiced beforehand, such as the choreographed cell phone call by Horn.

Higher levels of expression, including premeditated behavior and most often involving black receivers, are considered by the NFL Rules Committee to be so abhorrent that they are grounds for fines, penalties or both. The Andrews study, however, is not based on the subjective white cultural constructs of owners, most coaches, all general managers or the Rules Committee as to what is proper celebratory behavior. It is grounded solely on descriptive statistics.

This data proves conclusively that there are racial differences in end-zone celebrations by black and white professional football players, with blacks almost universally celebrating at the highest level and whites not celebrating or celebrating at the lowest level.

Andrews' results also show that players, regardless of race, celebrate longer and at a higher level in close or home games. These findings are to be expected, since close games always evoke higher emotions and the home field gives athletes a safer and more appreciative audience. Even in these situations, however, black athletes (most often wide receivers) celebrate at a higher level than white athletes.

Dare we contemplate the possibility that recent NFL rules with attendant high fines were initiated solely to curb black athletes' premeditated displays in the end zone because the displays offend the cultural sensibilities of the largely white leadership? It would appear so, especially when reviewing the comments of the NFL hierarchy, older white fans and retired athletes who all claim a "deep reverence for the game."

These detractors, unfortunately, did not grow up in the hip-hop generation that was weaned on NFL video games that emphasize celebrations like the "Heisman pose" and spinning the ball while doing a back flip.

The end-zone behavior of black players like Horn is also being singled out as anti-team. His coach at New Orleans, Jim Haslett, said as much. "The thing that bothered me more than anything is he put himself before the football team," Haslett said in referring to the penalty called against the Saints after the cell phone incident. "To me that's selfish."

What is selfish and ethnocentric is the failure of the NFL to recognize what sociologists like James Jones in "Racism: A Cultural Analysis of the Problem" have long recognized: Personal uniqueness is a highly valued trait in African-American culture for a myriad of historical and social reasons.

The concept of an individualistic and improvisational style, in part, is the historical legacy of an unpredictable future for blacks in a white-dominated society from the time of slavery to the present. In stark contrast, white culture puts a high premium on individuals downplaying emotions and initial impulses - to the point that white broadcaster Chris Collinsworth had a designated spiker when he played for Cincinnati. Collinsworth saw nothing wrong in celebrating in the end zone; he just felt foolish and lacked style.

Kochman describes the differing styles of blacks and whites: "Black style is more self-conscious, more expressive, more expansive, more colorful, more intense, more assertive - and more focused on the individual" than the more repressed style of dominant white society.

It is wrong for the NFL to continue singling out and stigmatizing black athletes for merely exhibiting a different cultural style while celebrating in the end zone. There should be rules in blatant situations of disrespect for an opponent, such as when John Randle of the Seattle Seahawks raised his leg like a dog to feign peeing on an opponent he just tackled. But what is wrong with athletes displaying pure fun and emotion?

If anything, the NFL should change the rules to allow all players to express themselves as individuals, so there will be no league penalties assessed against their teams, with only their coaches deciding whether the behavior displayed was acceptable.

Sports after all is a microcosm of the larger society. Is it not enough that blacks are punished daily at work and play for individual expressions of taste in clothes, speech, hair and communication styles that do not fit the norms of the majority culture? Do blacks now have to fit into a homogenized version of what are acceptable celebratory rites in what is essentially nothing more than a game?


ROSS T. RUNFOLA is an attorney and a professor of social sciences at Medaille College, where he specializes in the sociology of sport and gender roles.