Swinney defends handling of assistant’s use of slur
Attempting to end some of the controversy that popped up around his program over the last week, Clemson coach Dabo Swinney released a 14-minute video Monday saying he supports the Black Lives Matter movement and defending how he dealt with assistant Danny Pearman, who uttered a racial slur during a practice in 2017.
In his first public acknowledgment of the incident, Swinney said he would “fire a coach immediately” if he called a player the “N-word” but said that is not what happened and that the context of the incident with former Clemson tight end D.J. Greenlee was crucial to how it was handled.
Swinney said he has made it known to players he does not like hearing the N-word used by anyone in his program and that Pearman was trying to correct Greenlee when he repeated it during a drill.
“He shouldn’t have done that. There’s no excuse for saying it, doesn’t matter what the context is, but there is a big difference,” Swinney said. “He didn’t call someone an N-word. There’s a lot of things I don’t allow in our program, but when things happen we deal with it. Sometimes it’s in private, sometimes it’s in public. In this case the player came to me in private, and we handled it in private.”
The incident came to light last week as a result of former Clemson player Kanyon Tuttle, who said on Twitter that he was upset that it was never addressed with the team at the time. Tuttle had been critical of Swinney’s comments about race and the national response to the killing of George Floyd during a press conference last Monday, which addressed racism as more of a general moral issue rather than a specific, systemic problem that the United States was grappling with.
Swinney said forgiveness and grace was a factor in how he handled the Pearman incident but did not directly address Tuttle’s criticism about how it was addressed with the team at the time.
“We have great communication with our team, and it was handled,” Swinney said.
Swinney pushed back on another allegation from Tuttle that he discouraged players from attending an anti-racism protest on campus. Swinney claimed instead that he only informed them that if they wanted to participate, they should know what they’re getting into and be comfortable showing up on the local news or ESPN because they would be recognized as Clemson football players.
Swinney also said a Twitter allegation that he himself used the “N-word” in criticizing music being played in the locker room on one occasion was not true and said a picture of him that surfaced on social media Saturday of him wearing a “Football Matters” t-shirt was not intended as a shot at the Black Lives Matter protests happening around the country. The shirt was given to him as part of the National Football Foundation’s campaign to promote football amidst declining participation numbers due to concerns about CTE.
“Any insinuation that I was trying to mock the Black Lives Matter movement is just an attack on my character and really sad,” Swinney said. “But I also will say I wholeheartedly support Black Lives Matter. I don’t think that’s quite adequate enough. I think black lives significantly and equally matter. To me Black Lives Matter is like ‘Hey, we matter too.’ ”
Swinney also talked about his record of hiring black staff members and touted his role “in helping create generational change for many young black men that the good Lord has entrusted me with.”
Swinney did not mention his comments from last Monday or say that he had erred in any way by failing to fully acknowledge the scope of the protests occurring around the country or previous comments that had been dismissive of NFL players’ concerns around police brutality. He did strike a different tone in the video, saying he wanted his program to help create change against social injustice and police brutality.
“It’s has been hurtful to see the pain in my players, to hear it in their voices,” Swinney said. “I know they’re hurting and they have pain for what’s going on in this country and in this world and it’s also hurtful to see our program be attacked, but I know and what I’ve lived my life by is God never says ‘oops.’ He only says ‘ops.’ We have an opportunity to grow to learn to listen to get better and get stronger and that’s what we’ll do.”