ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the content of a press conference given by Clemson Tigers football team head coach Dabo Swinney in which he downplays racial injustice in American society by asserting that societal problems can be boiled down to a “sin problem.” In the early fall of 2016, Dabo Swinney, head coach of the Clemson Tigers football team, was asked to comment on the ongoing protest of then San Francisco 49ers’ quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick’s protest was boldly expressed out of the gate with his sitting, later kneeling, for the national anthem—an act that was meant to call the nation’s attention to the fact that the United States still sees an alarming number of police shootings of unarmed Black men and women. Whiteness is the quality that helps explain the prospering of white people over people of color based on the historical benefits afforded to those with the right skin pigmentation.
