In the past 13 years, black NFL players have arrested nearly 10 times as often as white players, reports USA Today. Of 687 NFL player arrests since January 2000, 294 came as a result of a traffic stop. The paper said 88 percent of the traffic-stop arrests were of black players. About two-thirds of all NFL players are black.
Sociologists attribute the disproportionate to several social factors in the black population at large, including a disproportionate rate of poverty and single-parent backgrounds. Those factors also include profiling, civil rights experts and NFL players say. “We get looked at a lot more than the average Joe Blow because of what kind of car we drive or how we look,” said Washington Redskins wide receiver Santana Moss, who was not one of the arrestees. “You see a young, black kid in a nice ride, and chances are he’s an athlete. Sometimes you get labeled.”