Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio’s made some post in the past that I questioned from a racial perspective, but he seemed to be a really cool person – albeit one who stopped answering my emails when he got his deal with NBC.
This blogger first connected with Mike via email on the matter of Cincinnati Bengals Head Coach Marvin Lewis’ observation that the police in his city racially profiled people they stopped. Florio took issue with Lewis, and I took issue with Florio:
In a message dated 7/3/2007 11:44:51 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [email protected] writes:
But the other problem — a BIG ONE — is that police have conditioned
themselves to think of black men as bad, and that includes black
police officers. Cinncinati is on record as having a nasty racial
profiling problem. Marvin was right.
i agree that marvin was right — but he shouldn’t have said it the way he did. he tried to say that his players are profiled, and then that he didn’t mean racially.i also agree that there are serious problems and challenges with race in our country. i fear that they will never go away. and i am especially sensitive to that because, in our quest to point out the bad things about the NFL, the fact that the majority of players are african-american means that the majority of the guys we “pick on” are african-american, too — especially if many of the arrests are the result of profiling.
i told jason whitlock after the imus thing that i think God made us all different colors to see if we could set aside superficial differences in our pursuit of a greater good. over our entire human history, our species probably would be graded in this regard as a D-, and maybe as an F+.
take it easy.
mike f.
After that exchange, and many others I could post, Mike Florio seemed to be more enlightened when making blasts about NFL players in trouble. Well, he’s regressed a bit.
In his post about Maurice Vick’s obvious troubles, Florio wrote this:
Marcus Vick, 28, has had a variety of legal issues, but nothing like what his brother experienced. Yet.
That was freaking classless. Mike’s gone and did was he used to do that made reading his blog stomach-turning: make up hyperbolic references to a person’s assumed criminal future – especially of that person’s black. Tony Dungy should take Mike Florio aside and talk with him, because Mike will not listen to me.
Florio, a trained lawyer, could use his smarts to make reasoned comments on how players should conduct themselves, rather than play into the rampant anti-intellectualism that has contaminated much of American life today.
And having a blogging edge does not mean or have to translate to kicking a black athlete when he’s down. Mr. Florio, knock if off, for Pete’s sake.
Thanks!