I’ve been thinking about the NFL anthem protests and I can’t get over the fact that, however well intentioned they might be, they’re not actually really doing very much. Indeed, given the reactions of various people on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, they’re actively making things worse. Anyway, I had a bunch of free time today so I decided, mostly out of idle curiosity, to see if there was anything more concrete these players could do instead. So I decided to roughly estimate how many of these fabulously wealthy NFL players would need to donate 1 month’s salary in order to buy every 18-45 year old black man a personal body camera.
It’s not a hugely unreasonable request. A man is expected to spend (at least!) one month’s salary on a wedding ring, and when you take the 50% divorce rate into account, they might well have to do that two or three times. If they can give up a month’s salary for a diamond ring, surely they can give up a month’s salary to save black lives.
The salaries of NFL players range widely, but the average annual salary of an NFL player is $2 million dollars. That means the average monthly salary is $166,660.00. Including backup players, there are 53 players in an NFL team and 32 teams in the league.
$166,000.00 x 53 x 32 = $282,655,360.00. That’s how much money would be raised if every NFL player donated one month’s salary to…well, let’s call it the ‘Black Man Body Camera Fund’ (or BMBCF, for short). If the BMBCF was a registered charity, the donations would be tax free so every penny of that $282,655,360.00 would go towards buying body cameras for black men aged 18-45.
How many body cameras would that buy? Well, you want the cameras to be reliable, but you also want a good deal so you need to find a body camera that’s both reliable and reasonably cheap. A quick Amazon search revealed lots of potentially good cameras, but the one which I think strikes the best balance between reliability and affordability is the ‘Veho VCC-003-MUVI-BLK MUVI’ which is priced at $40.69 - Let’s call it an even $40 to make the math easier. How many $40 dollar body cameras can you buy for $282,655,360.00?
Answer: Seven million, sixty six thousand, three hundred and eighty four.
However, we mustn’t forget that $40.00 is the marked up retail price. Because this will be a charitable endeavour, these cameras would obviously be given away at cost. What this means is that, in practise, the BMBCF would most likely pay quite a bit less than $40.00 per body cam. If we redo the sum assuming a mere $5.00 discount per unit, the BMBCF would be able to buy 8, 075,867 body cams for black American men between the ages of 18 and 45. This number increases even further if the BMBCF were given a bulk purchase discount, though I couldn’t guess at what that would be so I’ve not factored it in.
But why focus on this particular demographic in the first place? Well, the answer is that, of all black people in America, the vast majority who are actually shot by the cops are men between the ages of 18 and 45. For example, in 2016, two hundred and sixty six black people were killed by the police. Of those 266, only 13 were women. Of the remaining 253, only 6 were under the age of 18 and only 29 were over the age of 45. That means 218 of the 266 black people shot by cops in 2016 (or 82%), were men between the ages of 18 and 45, so it makes sense to focus on that demographic.
So would 8,075,867 body cams be enough? Well, there are 21.5 million black men in America. Of those 21.5 million, 33.5% are under 18 as per the 2005 census (I know it’s a little dated, but it was the most recent one I could find that gave clear(ish) figures, and I don’t imagine the demographics have changed too much), and 6.5% are over 65. That means there are 12.9 million black men in America between the ages of 18 and 65.
Here’s where we run into a slight problem. We’re only looking at body cams for the 18-45 age group, not 18-65. The census data for the under 18, 18-65 and 65+ age groups is very exact. However, for some reason the data for the age group 45-65 is laid out in a shitty bar chart which only gives rough percentages. I did my best to work out how many black American men there were between 45 and 65 and, far as I can tell, it’s roughly 12%. I could be off a couple of percent in either direction, but let’s go with 12% for now. That’s 2,580,000. Take that away as well and the approximate number of black American men between 18-45 is 10,320,000.
So, let’s bring this to a conclusion. If every NFL player donated a mere one month’s salary to a fund to buy body cams for those black Americans most at risk of being shot by the cops, they would be able to buy cameras for just over 80% of them. That percentage would rise considerably if the NFL players donated one month’s worth of sponsorship money as well. For instance, Peyton Manning earned 12 million in endorsements last year. An extra million would buy nearly 30,000 more body cameras, and that’s just one month’s endorsement money from one player.
Now, you may be asking yourself “Why should they bother?. The real problem is the cops, and the system which protects them.” You might also ask “Why is it the responsibility of black men to protect themselves from the cops? They shouldn’t have to do that.” Both of those things are true. Unfortunately, systems are slow to change and while they’re changing, the number of black men shot by the cops is only going to go up. If those black men most at risk of being shot by the cops had body cameras of their own, they’d be able to watch the cops, and the cops would be forced to be a bit less trigger happy when dealing with young black men.
Bottom line is that if young black men between the ages of 18 and 45 had body cameras, they would be much less likely to be shot by cops. Rightly or wrongly, when NFL players kneel for the National Anthem, the only thing they seem to actually achieve is pissing off a bunch of people who just want to watch football. They don’t actually save any lives, and they’re not even raising awareness because everyone is already aware of this issue anyway. In practise, they’re basically doing fuck all. Can anyone, anywhere, point to a single life saved by these protests?
By donating 1 month’s salary & 1 month’s endorsement money, these players could actually do something that made a real difference. Even the lowliest NFL player makes an easy six figures a year. They’re already absurdly rich. It’s not like 1 month’s salary is going to break them. It’s a small price to pay for helping empower young black men to protect themselves and feel safer.
Also, as a bonus, I reckon it’ll really piss off Trump 
Just a thought.
Anyway, I guess the debate is:
a). Is this a good idea in theory?
b). If so, would it be a workable idea in practise?
c). Given how it’s within the means of these players to take real action to help fix the problem, to what extent do they bear a moral responsibility to do more than just kneel for the national anthem?
Sources: The Counted: people killed by police in the United States – interactive | US policing | The Guardian - Database of people killed by police, maintained by The Guardian newspaper.
http://tinyurl.com/y72h5zdh - 2005 census.
Black Male Statistics - BlackDemographics.com - Black male stats from blackdemographics.com