Eli Manning and White Privilege

As I move into the latter stages of my grad career, my mind has increasingly been turning toward teaching. It's always been a thought of mine, expecially since I'm earning a degree that pretty much only lets you be a professor, but as I get closer to tackling my reading list, taking my prelims and getting to the point where I can teach my own course, I've started to put a great deal of thought into the nuts-and-bolts aspects.

The most fun of these is compiling anecdotal examples from pop culture that I can use to illustrate sociological concepts to the kids and make me that "cool" prof who is really cool only in his own head.

But lately I've been kicking around a good one: Eli Manning. Specifically, Eli is an ideal example of racial, gender, and class privilege, specifically how these act as advantages, but still leave room for personal agency.

Eli Manning has finally proved he's a decent quarterback. I mean, it does take some talent to lead a last-minute, Super Bowl-winning touchdown drive against a team many had already crowned as the greatest in history. But prior to that, he was really just some shmuck who had a famous dad and even more famous brother.

And therein lies the hidden operation of multiple forms of privilege. Sure, Eli clearly has some talent, but would he ever have been able to put that talent to use were he not Eli Manning? That is to say, if his father wasn't a famous NFL quarterback who made great investments in training him his whole life would he have been able to start at a major Division I (or Bowl Subdivision) team? And if he did not have an older brother shedding record books would he have been such a high draft pick?

Think about it -- how much promise did Eli show in college? Enough to warrant a number 1 draft pick? It's at least an arguable point.

And that itself proves what I'm trying to say. Had his name been Jamal Henderson and he went from a vocational high school to starting a few years at Grambling, with the exact same skill sets, would he have been drafted so high? Or even at all? Not to mention if he had another X chromosome in place of that Y.

This is not to deny that he has talent. Like I said, he turned in a pretty good game in one of the best Super Bowls ever played. But if his skin color, gender, and family lineage (class status) had not opened the doors for him in the first place, would he have ever even had the opportunity to display that talent?

Maybe, but it seems unlikely. Hell, if he didn't have all those factors working in his favor, he'd be lucky to be as successful as Cooper, let alone Peyton.