One of the first things new Browns VP of Football Operations Kwesi Adofo-Mensah took note of after being hired was how many young black men congratulated him for his climb up the NFL’s front office ladder. Adofo-Mensah was taken aback by how much reach his move from San Francisco to Cleveland had on the African-American community.
Adofo-Mensah noted he got “a lot” of congratulatory notes “from awesome Cleveland fans”, but it was others that he got that really hit home.
“Some of them were from black men who were just saying that it inspired them to see somebody like me in a position like this,” the 38-year-old exec explained in his Zoom session with reporters on Thursday. “That honestly was super meaningful to me and helped me kind of see that for what it was.”
What that is in Cleveland is a front office led by Andrew Berry, another young black man. It’s a rare occurrence to have two prominent, decision-making roles occupied by people of color in the NFL, a league where more than half the players are non-white.
That’s not lost on Adofo-Mensah.
“I know the league is trying their best,” he said. “It is a complex problem. It is not necessarily always the result of bad intentions. It is just sometimes these things are self-fulfilling feedbacks that continue over time, and it really is hard to break the cycle.”
Adofo-Mensah continued,
“Honestly, it is a cycle that happens throughout the rest of society. The NFL is no different than corporate America or Silicon Valley, where I just came from. I know that the NFL is trying, and I am going to be part of that effort to try and get my two cents of input.”