û¸By now, those who watched Sunday’s Super Bowl have most likely forgotten about the house ads promoting racial and cultural unity. That’s no doubt because a much stronger statement was delivered midway through the second quarter when a pass by the Kansas City Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes was intercepted and returned for an touchdown by Philadelphia’s Cooper DeJean.
DeJean, the first white player to start at cornerback in a Super Bowl in 24 years, has cheekily been described by media figures such as Bomani Jones as the league’s ultimate DEI hire. But while those comments have been made with tongues firmly planted in cheeks, there is some merit in describing the Eagles’ victory as a win for diversity, equity and inclusion – something that suddenly finds itself under attack in America.
After all, Super Bowl LIX was never going to be just a game, not with the cultural storm brewing around the contest – not least Kendrick Lamar’s politically charged half-time show. But no force carried more momentum than the Chiefs coming into Sunday. They weren’t just playing for a third successive championship. They were carrying the mantle of America’s team in the second era of Donald Trump, who became the first sitting US president to attend a Super Bowl. At the same time, the NFL removed its longstanding antiracism slogans from the field, perhaps fearing Trump – who left the game early – would make it into yet another DEI issue to grandstand about.
There was no question which team the president came to see in New Orleans. Mahomes’s mother and brother took pictures with Trump. In the week before the game, the Chiefs’ star tight end Travis Kelce gushed about playing in front of the president despite Trump once writing in all caps that he hated the player’s girlfriend, Taylor Swift, after she threw her support behind Kamala Harris in the presidential election. (During the game he shared video of Swift being booed.) Trump picked Kansas City to three-peat, called Mahomes “a winner” and referred to his wife, accurately, as a “Maga fan.” Trump praised Chiefs fans for voting for him “in record numbers,” even though polling data shows Harris received substantially more votes in Kansas City’s more populous Missouri counties. And yet: from their wantonly offensive tomahawk chop cheer to the kicker who is besties with Maga senator Josh Hawley to the fact that the team plays in red, the Chiefs couldn’t appear in more lockstep with a Maga movement that’s hellbent on erasing 60 years of DEI gains. So it’s fitting that the most forceful rejection of this new political normal would come from Philadelphia, a city that hasn’t voted for a Republican president since 1932.
