Former NFL player Eugene Chung claims he was told that he was “not really a minority” when interviewing for a coaching job this offseason, the Boston Globe reported.
While reviewing his experience and qualifications during the interview, Chung claims “It was said to me, ‘Well, you’re really not a minority,’ ” the Globe reported. Chung said he was frozen and angry.
“I was like, ‘Wait a minute. The last time I checked, when I looked in the mirror and brushed my teeth, I was a minority,’ ” he said. “So I was like, ‘What do you mean I’m not a minority?’
“You are not the right minority we’re looking for,” the interviewer responded, according to Chung.
Chung claimed he was “dumbfounded” and said that is “when he realized what the narrative was,” the Globe reported.
Chung is of Korean descent and was the first-round pick of the New England Patriots in 1992 out of Virginia Tech, according to ESPN. He played for five seasons in the NFL. He was an assistant coach from 2010-2019 for the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs.
More awareness is being spotlighted on Asian-American discrimination, and because of their relative accomplishments, Asian-Americans are often not considered people of color, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“Asian-Americans are caught in a bind—condemn the system of white supremacy and privilege along with other people of color or be ‘banished’ from the victim group as white-adjacent,” Wenyuan Wu, executive director of Californians for Equal Rights, told the Wall Street Journal.
The shape-shifting nature of race grievance and a de facto racial hierarchy.
“Join us to fight white supremacy!”— Rainbow coalition style
“You are not the right minority.”— Harvard, Yale, NYC… now NFL.https://t.co/99ghButYQE— Wenyuan Wu, Ph.D. (@wu_wenyuan) May 22, 2021
“This is the type of discrimination people of Asian descent routinely deal with in America and it rarely gets acknowledged,” Wu told the Daily Caller. “I think racial spoils and racial identity politics fundamentally erode equal citizenship. Nobody wins in a zero-sum game that subjects individuals to a race-based competition of privilege, oppression and representation.”
The National Football League (NFL) has taken significant steps to combat alleged racism. The Rooney Rule is an NFL policy that requires every team to interview at least one non-white candidate for openings at the head coaching position, general manager jobs and front-office positions.
Additionally, the NFL announced plans to add the phrases “End Racism” in NFL end zones during the 2020 seasons and pledged to commit $250 million over a ten-year period to “combat systemic racism.”
The remarks were disturbing to Chung, especially given his background in football and coaching, according to the Globe.
Chung declined to name the team or interviewer.
“It was absolutely mind-blowing to me that in 2021, something like that is actually a narrative,” Chung said.