Written by: @Samaya.RN
Ever since Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem back in 2016, the NFL has found itself cornered into the focus of racial injustice geared toward African Americans and people of color.
Jay-Z’s entertainment foundation, RocNation, signed a multi-year deal with the sports league in late 2019, in regards to enhancing social justice efforts for the NFL. Now the hip-hop mogul/philanthropist has motivated, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, to commit to $100 million disbursement from the league toward community justice reform over a time span of the next ten years.
The NFL launched its foundation, “Inspire Change,” in early 2019. The platform was initiated to account education, police to community relations in criminal justice reform.
Desiree Perez, new chief executive of RocNation says, “Roger is amazing and we couldn’t be doing this without him. He has been so supportive of us and is critical to us making [a] change at the N.F.L.”.
As for critics claiming this philanthropic effort to be disingenuous, Jay-Z has been quoted as saying social justice has to move past Kaepernick’s kneeling, adding, “No one is saying he hasn’t been done wrong. He was done wrong. I would understand if it was three months ago. But it was three years ago, and someone needs to say, ‘What do we do now, because people are still dying. As long as real people are being hurt and marginalized and losing family members, then yes, I can take a couple rounds of negative press,” according to sources from Black Enterprise.
