Weathering Anti-Blackness: Injury, Brain Trauma, and Neurodegeneration in American Sport

Definition: The authors theorize "weathering in sport" as a process that cumulatively harms, breaks down, or omits the bodies of Black athletes due to a persistent culture of anti-Black racism in American sports.
Theoretical Roots: The concept integrates "the weather of anti-Blackness" (Sharpe 2016) and the biological consequences of "weathering" (Geronimus 1996).
Core Argument: American sporting institutions rely on Black labor but lack medical care and concern for Black athletes once they are no longer productive for the system.

Afterlife of Slavery: Modern medical practices are situated within the "afterlife of slavery," where Black lives are devalued by historical racial logic (Hartman 2007).
Cranial Science: Samuel Morton utilized craniology to argue that people of African descent had smaller brains and were intellectually deficient.
Medical Race-Norming: Samuel Cartwright developed a spirometer to quantify a supposed $20\%$ deficiency in lung capacity in Black people compared to white people.
Persistence of Pseudoscience: This "dystopian racial science" persists in contemporary medicine through race-norming and ethnic adjustment scales used in neuropsychology, pulmonology, and nephrology.

Inaugural Event: On June 2, 2021, Major League Baseball (MLB) celebrated the first Lou Gehrig Day to honor the player who died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in $1941$ .
Centrality of Whiteness: ALS has been coded as a "white disease" through Gehrig's moniker, rendering non-white sufferers invisible.
Epidemiological Discrepancies: While some databases suggest $93\%$ of people with ALS are white, Black people often live significantly shorter lives with the disease and are diagnosed late.
Neuro-racism: Black patients often take $13\,\text{months}$ or longer to receive an ALS diagnosis compared to white patients because of the erroneous belief that Black people do not get the disease.

Concussion Settlements: On June 2, 2021, the National Football League (NFL) announced it would discontinue "race-norming" in legal settlements for concussion-related injuries.
Statistical Manipulation: The practice assumed Black players started with lower baseline cognitive functioning. Therefore, a Black player required a much lower current score than a white player to prove impairment and receive compensation.
Racial Stacking: Black players are overrepresented ( $70\%$ of the league) and often "stacked" into speed positions (e.g., running back, defensive back) which data shows sustain the most injuries.
Risk Projections: The NFL's own actuaries projected that $28\%$ of the overall player population would develop long-term cognitive issues, and approximately $3,047$ ex-players would be diagnosed with Alzheimer's, ALS, or Parkinson's over the settlement's $65\text{-year}$ life.

Gruden Emails: In October $2021$ , Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden resigned following the discovery of racist, misogynistic, and homophobic emails.
Plantation Politics: The authors argue that the NFL operates under "plantation politics" where white men in power (owners and coaches) cultivate an environment that exploits Black labor while disregarding athlete well-being.
Performative Care: The league performs care—such as Moms Safety Clinics or medical treatment for active players—only to protect its capitalist investment in the labor force during their productive years.

Lee D. Baker: Highlights that the authors' work was published during a period of racial reckoning following the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmad Aubrey, and George Floyd. He credits the authors for exposing the "plantation politics" of the NFL.
Daniel Burdsey: Notes that while English football and rugby scholarship is largely silent on race regarding concussions, this article underscores the need to center race in the social science of sport.
Agustín Fuentes: Emphasizes that we must reject the "cultural-biological divide" and understand racism as a biocultural experience where systemic racism becomes embodied in human biology.
Gabriel A. Torres Colón: Questions how the agency of Black athletes looks when navigating power structures. He also notes that while injury rates vary by stacking, it is possible all football players carry similar risks for neurocognitive disorders regardless of race.
Lucia Trimbur and Lundy Braun: Discuss the Heckler Report ( $1985$ ) and how the NFL's race-norming mirrors "race correction" in other fields like nephrology (eGFR) and pulmonology.