Hunting The Muse

Systems and Jesse Jackson

Systems fascinate me. By systems, I mean... structures that approximate intent. Intent is inherently based in emotion. But in order to manifest, you have to put a structure around it. A system.

And yet, a system, by its very existence, can suggest that the emotion that brought it into being is irrelevant. The emotion can be leeched out, only leaving the framework, leaving it devoid of essence.

Law is a system. Someone feels, "but that is wrong!"... and they realize they can't trust everyone to not do that wrong thing, so they create a system. The system works for a while, and then there's a loophole. A loophole is what happens when the essence of the intent is being ignored. Letter versus Spirit.

What got me thinking about this? Well, there weren't enough minority hires in the NFL. So the NFL adopted a policy for every team to interview at least one minority for every coaching opening. Mariucci was fired for SF and hired by Detroit. He grew up in Michigan and was their only interviewed candidate. Reverend Jesse Jackson is protesting and asking the NFL to prohibit the Lions from this year's college draft.

What do I think about that? Well, what do I think about the policy? I think it's an honorable intent and a clumsy implementation. In this case several black coaches refused to interview with Detroit because they knew Mariucci was a shoe-in for the job. I mean, maybe they're a bunch of racists up there, but maybe this was a clear case of a homecoming for him and him being the clear best candidate. In other words, if those were true, you could hardly make the case he was hired there in Detroit because he was white. Even as a "tiebreaker".

So, in this case I guess I feel like while Detroit's choice might have gone against the structure of the agreement, it wasn't clearly against the intent of it. And I feel like Jackson is reacting to the structure of the agreement being violated, not the essence.

Structure versus essence. The problem isn't that the two are inherently opposed to each other. Structure marries to essence quite well when they are looking out for each other, when the people participating in them are committed to both. The problem is that there are these little warriors out there that keep setting the two against each other. Folks that scream to defend the structure of an agreement without even keeping the original intent of the agreement in mind. Or folks that deliberately break structure out of protest of its control and restriction.

Both are morally lazy. Jackson is being reactionary and unreasonable. Detroit was lazy. Detroit would have also been lazy to just go through the motions and give lip service to a minority candidate without it going nowhere. Detroit could have remembered the intent of the agreement - to respect and encourage diversity in the coaching staff - and actively brainstormed something, even if Mariucci was a foregone conclusion. Jackson can choose to lobby for Detroit to take a positive pro-diversity action rather than asking for them to be punished for not following the routine. Posted by Curt at February 6, 2003 08:49 PM