The Miami Dolphins are on a three-game win streak and on fire as the most exciting team in the AFC East. With the tandem of Tua Tagovailoa and Tyreek Hill, respectively, a surefire touchdown machine and Hill on track to have 2,000 or more receiving yards this season, the Dolphins are setting South Florida ablaze with hope again.
With all that the world knows about the Dolphins, what is obscure is head coach Mike McDaniel’s racial designation. According to the NFL, McDaniel is classified as a minority, which is vital in the wake of the departure of former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores, who is Black, and suing the NFL for alleged hiring discrimination; hiring another minority head coach after Flores is a diversity feather in the team’s cap.
Additionally, there are benefits to developing minorities for coaching positions in the NFL. However, the confusion stems from McDaniel, who initially claimed to be “human.”
Identity: Human
“It’s been very odd, to tell you the truth, this idea of ‘identifying’ as something,” McDaniel said back in February 2022, per ProFootballTalk. “I think people identify me as something, but I identity as a human being and my dad is Black. So whatever you want to call it, I know there’s a lot of people with a shared experience.”
The statement felt telling as McDaniel didn’t denote his mother as being white but honed in on his father being Black, which affirms he understands that his father’s ethnicity checks a box for the team and the league. However, his reluctance to confirm his Blackness gives Tiger Woods “Cablinasian” vibes, which feel more avoidant than inclusive.
“It’s weird that it comes up because I’ve just tried to be a good person. And I think my background opens my eyes a little bit. I don’t have any real experience with racism because I think you identify me as something close to — I don’t know. I know my mom experienced it when she married my dad. I know my dad experienced it, that’s in my family. But I guess that makes me a human being that can identify with other people’s problems.”
The Politics Of Picking a Side
He later clarified his position in a sit-down interview with ESPN’s Marcel Louis-Jacques, where he said, “First and foremost, I’m biracial … I’ve been extremely proud of that my whole life.”
McDaniel’s entire perspective must fit more neatly in a box for a league troubled with racial diversity problems in the coaching ranks. Although biracial is an identity, in the game of metrics, Black is Black when discussing diversity in corporate hiring practices, and McDaniel’s straddling of a line that America defines clearly makes his tenure as racially ambiguous as he claims also to be.
