"In a decade, the only people who are still playing football will be African-Americans and working class people." - Sociologist Harry Edwards

Harry Edwards, PhD

The public health policy debate (in which neuropathologists are inevitably enmeshed by virtue their involvement in the diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy) has taken on a new socio-economic ramification. I was reading an article this morning about NFL-player DeSean Jackson in the July 7th issue of ESPN The Magazine when I came across a provocative insight from sociologist Harry Edwards based on recent studies showing that white families and wealthier families are more informed about football-related concussions than their non-white and poor counterparts. Edwards had this to say about the changing demographics of football: "In a decade, the only people who are still playing football will be African-Americans and working class people."  Just as boxing was once embraced by Ivy League athletes but in recent decades dismissed as barbaric, football will one day be relegated to the underclass and only appreciated as a spectator sport among middle-class white people. Unsettling, isn't it?