The fight for compensation

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 26 November 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are NFL players being denied compensation because of racial-norming? Thousands of former American footballers claim they suffered brain injury as players, but are being denied compensation on racial grounds. Ed Butler speaks to Roxanne Gordon, the wife of Amon Gordon, once of the Cleveland Browns, who is one of hundreds of ex-players now claiming compensation from the NFL for brain injury sustained on the field of play. She says that race-norming was used in the testing of his concussion settlement. New York Times journalist, Ken Belson, who's pioneered a lot of the reporting on this story, told him what race-norming is. And Cathy O Neill, author of a book, Weapons of Math Destruction, who also runs Orca, a software auditing company, says race-norming applies in lots of areas of modern life particularly with the increased use of algorithms that can easily dominate and distort the way companies market to consumers, frequently on racial grounds. The NFL says it “remains fully committed to paying all legitimate claims and providing the important benefits that our retired players and their families deserve.”

(Picture: Dalvin Cook of the Minnesota Vikings runs the ball as Adrian Amos of the Green Bay Packers tackles on November 01, 2020 in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Credit: Getty Images.)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service.
0:05.8	Today, a former NFL wife on the prejudice she believes is denying her husband compensation.
0:12.8	Now we're discovering that not only did they object to the payment, it's designed for African-American players to be rejected. It seems to me
0:23.5	systemic racism is being used within medical care. The complex story of racial norming in the US
0:30.7	is in-built discrimination becoming a part of modern technology. When I was a data scientist
0:36.7	working in ad tech, my job was to segregate people, first by
0:41.4	income and wealth, and then secondarily by gender and class and race. That's what we do.
0:47.7	That's all to come in Business Daily from the BBC.
0:53.0	I consider myself somewhat of a caretaker for him.
0:56.5	You know, there's certain things that worry you, like going in the kitchen and making an omelet.
1:02.2	He might do that and leave the house and leave the stove on.
1:06.0	So we're almost operating with like a parent point five, like a parent and a half, because that full
1:12.0	responsibility can't be given to him to do the things that he used to be able to do.
1:17.1	The words there of Roxanne Gordon. She's the wife of Amon Gordon, once of the Cleveland
1:23.0	Browns, one of hundreds of ex-American football players, now claiming compensation from the NFL
1:29.2	for brain injury sustained on the field of play. My husband, Amon Gordon, was drafted in 2004
1:35.7	to the Cleveland Browns after coming out of Stanford University. He spent eight years playing
1:42.0	a defensive end, defensive nose and defensive tackle. So for his eight-year career, he spent eight years playing a defensive end, defensive nose, and defensive tackle. So for
1:46.6	his eight year career, he was nose to nose with other men that were 280, 300 pounds above. So
1:53.9	every play was impact throughout his entire career. Every play is a hit.
2:01.3	It's like their brain was just shaking around in their head like a peach inside of a
2:05.4	mason jar.
	...

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