NBC reporter's decision to quit lucrative gig to fight critical race theory says much about racism in America

This is a column by Morgan Campbell, who writes opinion for CBC Sports. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

Michele Tafoya, a longtime fixture as a sideline reporter on NBC's Sunday Night Football broadcasts, announced last week she had quit that job to, among other duties, join the fight against critical race theory, which the U.S. political right claims is the problem, not the actual racism.

To be clear, Tafoya, a five-time Sports Emmy award winner, isn't reinventing herself as an anti-racism educator. She's joining a movement that aims to stop educators from teaching students that racism shapes America's past and present. You could describe it as anti anti-racism.

Tafoya's announcement triggered a mix of bewilderment and ridicule from some sports fans, which is expected. If I snagged one of the highest-profile, highest-paid positions in my industry, and then quit so I could invest my time in pressuring schools to stop teaching Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation, you guys would have a right to question a lot about me. 

Like my priorities.

Or my character.

My ability to distinguish between fighting a fire and letting it burn.

Instead, let's choose empathy.

Imagine yourself in Tafoya's shoes, as someone who now claims to organize her life around the principle that the world is colour blind, and then trying to cover the National Football League. How do you react when you realize that 70 per cent of the league's players are Black, but no team owners are? That the current roster of head coaches includes two Black people, and a third who, under cross-examination, identifies as bi-racial? That Black and white players — even those who grew up near each other — speak the same language with different accents? 

Those details could add up to shatter the fantasy that skin colour doesn't matter, and could certainly force somebody in Tafoya's position to make a choice. Tafoya, surrounded by reality, chose to stake her career on a post-racial illusion. It takes a sort of courage to watch evidence pile up on the other side of your opinion and then, in such a public way, declare that the evidence is out of line. So credit Tafoya for betting on her beliefs.

She has also reportedly joined the campaign of Kendall Qualls, an African-American Republican running for governor of Minnesota.

But empathy has limits, and another phrase describing Tafoya's commitment to principle is "willful ignorance." 

Days after leaving NBC, Tafoya appeared on Tucker Carlson's show to discuss how the real evil isn't racism, but teaching kids about it.

"It breaks my heart that my kids are being taught that skin colour matters," she told Carlson, who, according to the Anti-Defamation League, traffics in white supremacist conspiracy theories.