Doyel: The white privilege protecting Dana White kept me out of jail
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Dana White slaps his wife and someone records it with their cell phone, and for about 24 hours it goes viral on Twitter. Then it mostly goes away. Were there people talking still about it, here and there? Sure. Look on Twitter. People talking about yogurt here and there. Name a topic, and people are talking about it in bits and pieces.
But when the topic is domestic violence in sports, especially when there is audio or video evidence, it goes viral until something happens. Call it cancel culture, call it justice, but when a man assaults a woman and there is iron-clad proof, the story is everywhere until Ray Rice is released or Tyreek Hill is suspended or Kareem Hunt is fired.
The Dana White story had mostly gone away after video of him slapping his wife in Cabo San Lucas surfaced Jan. 2, and it might have stayed away had the California Legislative Women's Caucus not grown tired of waiting for UFC owner Endeavor Group or UFC partner ESPN or someone, anyone, to do something. The CLWC wrote a letter on Monday, a week after the incident, expressing its dismay at the silence.
Dana White latest: No punishment from Endeavor for slapping wife
The letter was addressed to Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, but the words apply to so many more:
“In the days since the video was released, you have remained silent. Your continued silence speaks volumes. As you once wrote: ‘Silence and inaction are not an option.’”
That last part, reminding Emanuel – one of the most powerful executives in Hollywood – of his own words? He’d written those very words not three months earlier, in an op-ed for the Financial Times. Emanuel, who is Jewish, was calling for a corporate boycott of artist Kanye West for his antisemitism. Emanuel wasn’t wrong in October 2022.
Is Emanuel wrong, now, to decide silence and inaction are an option for a high-profile employee caught on video striking his wife? You’d think he’s wrong, but there are unwritten rules that govern society, and at times those rules are different for Dana White than people like Kanye West (and Ray Rice, Tyreek Hill and Kareem Hunt).
Is Dana White, who presumably will go unpunished by the UFC, the recipient of something academics have defined – and others have mocked – as “white privilege”? Like so many things, that’s a matter of opinion. Think what you think.
But let me tell you about what happened to me two years ago. Or rather, what didn’t happen to me for reasons I can ascribe only to what U.S. scholar Peggy McIntosh described in 1987 as “an invisible package of unearned assets.”
What did my unearned asset – my skin color – do for me two years ago?
Kept me out of the news. Kept me out of jail.
'Are you gonna read me my rights?'
When the Greenwood Police officer started digging through his wallet, this is what I thought: I’m about to be front-page news in the IndyStar.
This is what I asked him: “Are you looking for your Miranda card? Are you gonna read me my rights?”
“Yes sir,” he said.
Let’s back up.
I’d just gotten home from Kroger one morning in July 2020. There was a police car outside my apartment building, with an officer standing next to it. I approached him with a smile, my hands full of grocery bags, and was about to walk past when this happened:
Him: “Mr. Doyel?”
Me: “Are you here for me?”
“Yes sir. Would you have a seat here please?”
He pointed to the sidewalk, and told me what I was accused of: Hours earlier, someone had broken into the apartment across the hall from me, the only other door on that floor, and rummaged through the dresser of the young woman who lived there. The suspect apparently gratified himself into her lingerie. Just telling you what I was told.
“And you think I did that?”
“Yes sir,” he said, and told me there were two reasons why.
One, the victim had told him that the guy who lived across the hall from her was “unusually nice.” I start to relax. It’s true, I told the cop. I’m nice to my neighbors. Ask anyone in the building. I offer to help them move or get them items when I go to the store. What’s the other reason?
“Your newspaper was on her living room floor.”
Now I’m tasting bile in my throat. Look, I’m telling you same as I told him, I’m innocent – but I see how it looks.
It's the newspaper's fault
Here’s what the cop needed to know: My IndyStar delivery person is amazing, getting out of her car every day – even in the rain or snow – and walking up three flights of stairs to deliver my paper. Most homes, she throws the paper out her car window. Doesn’t even stop. As for me, my newspaper is usually against the neighbor’s door, whoever lives there. Am I supposed to complain? I do not. I just walk across the hall and get it. That morning, weirdly enough, I hadn’t gotten a paper.
Now I knew why.
That guy – the suspect, the creeper – must’ve broken into my neighbor’s apartment and, on his way through the door, kicked my newspaper inside. Why? Ask him.
I’m explaining all of this to the cop, and saying there are only two options here:
“Either I’m the stupidest person alive, choosing the only other apartment on my floor to break in, bringing my newspaper with me and accidentally leaving it there…”
He interrupted me: “Are you saying that’s what happened?”
No! I’m practically shouting. I’m saying it’s Option B: Someone else did it, and for whatever reason they kicked my newspaper inside.
Now I’m asking if the suspect left DNA – “Yes sir,” he says – and asking him to swab my cheek right now. I’ve got nothing to hide. Wasn’t me.
Now the police officer is looking at me differently. I ask him gently, “Do you read the paper?”
A little, he says.
I ask him, and you’re damn right I asked him, because this is life-changing stuff here: “Do you know what I do?”
He looks at his notepad, at my name, and says: “Oh, you’re Gregg …”
Yes.
The officer puts away his notepad, gets my cell number in case he needs to call me, gets in his car and drives away.
My first thought: I’m gonna be sick.
My second thought, after talking my way out of a terrible situation where I was an obvious and even logical suspect:
If I were Black, would I be in the backseat of his car?
NFL, like America, grappling with racism still
So many people hate the idea of “white privilege.” If life were so easy for us, they say, why am I not doing better? As if white privilege were a winning card to play. It’s the opposite, really: It’s the absence of what is, in too many people’s minds, a losing card.
It's why, after centuries of overt racism including legalized slavery and segregation led to unspoken and even (occasionally) unconscious institutional racism, President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10925 in 1961, mandating "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”
That’s the history. More recently, the NFL grapples today with decidedly unequal hiring practices in a league where nearly 70% of players are Black, but more than 80% of head coaches are white. Four of the last 10 coaches fired after one year for performance reasons, including Houston’s David Culley in 2021 and Lovie Smith in 2022, were Black. Dating to 1999, of the last 16 coaches fired for performance reasons after one season, six were black. That’s 38.5%.
That’s one set of facts. Here’s another:
UFC president Dana White hits his wife in Cabo, someone catches it on video, and the world sees it. People like me, who once wrote thousands of words about Ray Rice and Tyreek Hill and the missteps of the NFL, didn’t write a word about Dana White. Meanwhile, White’s boss, who demanded a corporate boycott of anti-Semite Kanye West, hasn’t said a word about White’s hand striking his wife.
Doyel in 2014: The Ray Rice effect has more women seeking shelter
Again, until the California Legislative Women's Caucus got involved on Monday, the issue had nearly disappeared, even on Wall Street. After the Dana White video surfaced, Endeavor’s stock price dropped nearly 6%, from $22.54 to $21.20. After steadily rising for a week, the stock price was almost completely back on Wednesday morning ($22.32).
The status quo remains, even for Dana White. He has spoken publicly, offering no excuses and even urged people defending him – because many people were defending him, for some reason – to stop.
But White said there would be no suspension, leave of absence, nothing. He’d already paid his price for slapping his wife. Negative publicity, mainly. Plus, he said, a suspension wouldn’t actually hurt him (he’s rich), but would hurt the company.
You wonder: How would it have gone over in 2014, had Ray Rice used that defense?
The negative publicity is punishment enough. Plus, the Ravens need me.
This is an ugly story, start to finish, from the moment the first slave ship arrived in America to the Civil War to Jim Crow to where we are now, with a mob led by white supremacists attacking the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to keep their preferred president in power. We have not achieved a post-racial America. That day will never happen, though every day, through every action, we can try to get closer.
Does the firing of Lovie Smith get us closer, or farther away?
How about the treatment of Dana White?
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: No suspension a privilege for UFC's Dana White after slapping wife
