Eric Reid Slams NFL For Using 'Race-Norming' To Determine Brain Injury Claim Payouts

LOADING ERROR LOADING Eric Reid joined a chorus of people on social media slamming the NFL this week over its use of “race-norming” to determine players’ eligibility for payouts for their brain injury claims. Reid laid out racist assumptions behind using “race-norming” to determine brain injuries on Thursday, tweeting: “‘Race-norming’ = blacks are dumber than whites so the brain injuries they suffered didn’t effect them as traumatically bc they were dumb to begin with.” “race-norming” = blacks are dumber than whites so the brain injuries they suffered didn’t effect them as traumatically bc they were dumb to begin with NFL: *uses race norming* Also NFL: the norms were developed “to stop bias in testing, not perpetrate it” https://t.co/4eZhcO9yx0 — Eric Reid June 3, 2021 Former NFL players Najeh Davenport and Kevin Henry made a similar argument when they sued the league last year, claiming that “race-norming” made Black former football players less likely to be eligible for benefits as part of the NFL’s $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims. In these tests that use “race-norming,” the scoring algorithm used to determine cognitive impairment requires Black men to score lower than their white counterparts to receive a diagnosis of a brain-related disease. Dr. Art Caplan, a New York University medical ethicist, told the AP last month that he believed the practice is “problematic,” saying that it’s “tied in too closely to racism.” “It continues to look as if it’s trying to exclude people rather than trying to do what’s right, which is to help people that, clinically, have obvious and severe disability,” he said.