NFL Removes ‘End Racism' From Super Bowl Field Amid Trump's War on DEI
Instead, 'Choose Love' will be featured along the back of one of the end zones at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX on Sunday. The other end zone will display 'It Takes All of Us,' as it has since the NFL began incorporating field stencils for the league's Inspire Change initiative in 2020.
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'The Super Bowl is often a snapshot in time and the NFL is in a unique position to capture and lift the imagination of the country,' NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy said in a statement, per ESPN. ''Choose Love' is appropriate to use as our country has endured in recent weeks wildfires in Southern California, the terrorist attack here in New Orleans, the plane and helicopter crash near our nation's capital and the plane crash in Philadelphia.'
President Donald Trump is expected to attend Sunday's game, a White House official told CNN, which will make him the first sitting US president to attend a Super Bowl. The news of the NFL nixing the 'End Racism' stencil from this year's Super Bowl comes amid Trump's war against against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs within the federal government. One of Trump's first acts in his second term as president was to sign an executive order shutting down federal DEI policies and encouraging the private sector to end' what the order claims is 'illegal DEI discrimination and preferences.'
Major corporations have begun to rollback their DEI initiatives in response to conservative backlash and lawsuits from right-wing groups — despite vowing to better support Black and Brown Americans employees and to incorporate more inclusive hiring practices in the aftermath of George Floyd's murder in 2020. Following Trump's victory in the 2024 election against Vice President Kamala Harris, Walmart confirmed that it would not be renewing a racial equity center and would no longer consider race and gender to improve diversity when granting supplier contracts. Following the announcement, Amazon, Meta, McDonald's, and Target joined the stampeded of mega corps retreating from their DEI programs. Meanwhile, others like Apple, Costco and Microsoft have defended their practices and pushed back against the anti-DEI movement.
In a statement on Monday, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that he doesn't think the NFL's initiatives to promote diversity conflict with the Trump administration's efforts to ban DEI.
'Our policies have been designed to be well within the law, well within the practice,' said Goodell. 'There are no quotas in our system. This is about opening that funnel and bringing the best talent into the NFL.' He added: 'We also believe we are doing the right thing for the NFL and our policies are consistent with the current administration as well as the last administration.'
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