On June 7, 2023, Glenn “Shemy” Schembechler III — son of long-serving Michigan coach Glenn “Bo” Schembechler — published an op-ed in The Michigan Daily explaining and apologizing for the racist behavior he exhibited on social media that led to his resignation. This op-ed has already been analyzed by Sports writer Charlie Pappalardo as a case study for accountability in the Digital Age, but I bring you a different approach to how this situation should be discussed. In the introductory paragraphs of Pappalardo’s analysis, he identifies his credibility: “As a white man, I should not — and will not — be the one to say whether Schembechler should be forgiven. That’s not up to me.” Like the entirety of Michigan in Color, I am not white, and what I want to say is different.
My thoughts on having a statement issued through Arizona PR firm Rose + Allyn published in a newspaper aside, my aim here is to analyze the rhetoric of Schembechler’s apology and how it’s at odds with the material effects of his actions. We want to give an objective, materially concerned response on how this article functions in its language. One last thing: If taking this op-ed apart word by word seems unsympathetic, please remember that it’s more than likely exactly how the PR firm and Schembechler constructed it.
The statement’s first few sections start not on Schembechler’s story, but his mother’s — detailing a true-blue American success story briefly emphasizing that she grew up in a racially diverse community. He then plays an obviously defensive contrast of this brief biography with the issue at hand: “(T)hrough my recent actions on social media, I unintentionally let her, family and my God down. I let my beloved Michigan (…) my friends in the Black community and beyond down.” The empathetic angle is clear, but issues arise right off the bat.
First, we should question what Schembechler considers “recent” — the earliest-reported tweet is from January, which of course is taking into account the small sample of liked tweets that were preserved before Schembechler purged the evidence en masse. The second is the use of “unintentionally.” One may imagine Schembechler’s finger simply slipping to the like button repeatedly on thousands of now-deleted unacceptable posts over several months. The implication arises, however, that Schembechler didn’t set out with some single-mind focus to betray the values he claims he was raised with and through the communities he emphasizes connection with. But what are the intentions when one endorses harmful rhetoric? Did Schembechler not recognize the material harm this rhetoric brings? Did he only learn it at 54 years of age, upon being caught? In just this fourth section of the op-ed, we can already see the effort to minimize Schembechler’s culpability, both in magnitude and agency in the situation.
Schembechler goes on to state: “I did not just show a lapse in judgment by liking comments, philosophies and observations on Twitter that must be part of our past and not our present and future. I strayed from my own beliefs built in church pews and on the gridiron.” As Pappalardo also noted, characterizing endorsements documented over the span of four months and potentially longer as just “a lapse in judgment” is not only misleading, but deliberately misconstruing the depth of Schembechler’s offenses.
The “church pews” mentioned are those of “Episcopalians (who) marched in chorus with calls for civil rights in the 1960s,” as Schembechler writes. Though the PR-generated article doesn’t come with linked sources, it’s true that the Episcopal Church’s integral role in the Southern slave-owning class of America led them to baptize enslaved Black people into their churches. The canons of liberation found within Biblical texts resonated with Black Episcopalians who seceded after the Civil War, eventually leading white Episcopalians a couple of centuries later during the Civil Rights Movement to empathize and found the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Racial Unity to purge segregation from their organizations. The Baptist Church had a similar compliance in the institution of slavery, but would also lead to exceptional contributions to the Civil Rights Movement: most notably the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Another such Baptist is House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, whom Schembechler has expressed clear thoughts about by liking Tweets comparing Jeffries to a tribal leader and stating that he was on drugs.
These statements re-introduce Schembechler’s faith as a forgiving and unifying force throughout the rest of the article: “We are all God’s children”; “Theirs are the beliefs in hope of all”; “Amazing grace can help me find this hope when lost.” The ultimate question is raised and contextualized: “‘Why did this happen?’ I ask myself. After all, I was raised on the right side of history and countless Black families allowed me as a football coach and scout to be a part of their incredible journeys.” It’s not particularly a mystery why this situation has occurred. Schembechler held beliefs — contrary to his history or not — that he was endorsing on Twitter, no matter his own history in his career. Additionally, his career as an NFL scout that recruited Black athletes is not intrinsically antiracist; in fact, it can be argued that the NFL only contributes to the objectification of Black athletes.
There’s also a telling omission here: One of the noted Tweets was transphobic. Schembechler never addresses this in his apology. Why? Well, the simplest explanation is that the trans community is not one that Schembechler profits from. However, if Schembechler is to continue his career in the athletics industry, he has to repair relations with the communities he has profited the most from.
“Why?” Schembechler continues, concluding: “History’s work is still not done. Because sirens from the shores of civil rights still sound, crashing even solid ships.” That last sentence is particularly worth digging into as a marker of the article’s first metaphor. It’s ambivalently confusing though — if these sirens sound from the shore of civil rights, are they the more literal modern sirens that ring righteously for an emergency, like the ones that called out for Schembechler to be fired? Or — through the language of “crashing even solid ships” — are these the Seirenes of Greek mythos, who would lure sailors in with alluring songs to crash on their rocky shores and feast on them? Schembechler’s metaphor betrays itself, for he either implies that these sirens of civil rights are pleasing, righteous calls that will only doom the heeder or — perhaps most accurately — the racist vitriol he engaged with online that led to his downfall pleased his ears like siren songs do, which then gives us that same question: Why?
Why was this rhetoric appealing to him? This metaphor touches on something that is never truly addressed in the article, that there is a deeper reason for endorsing racist rhetoric than a simple error in judgment — more than the poetic Schembechler attempts to wax, that “in our moral frailty as imperfect beings, we can drag knuckles.”
The rest of the article never answers that question regarding Schembechler’s actual reasons for this racist social media presence. Instead, he continues to treat his actions as if they were simple mistakes that other people must learn from — without ever exploring the actual reasons behind his own behavior and learning from that. He reaffirms that “any words or philosophies that … underplay the immeasurable suffering and long-term economic and social inequities that hundreds of years of slavery and the Jim Crow era caused for Black Americans are wrong. We must never sanitize explanations of philosophical bents that hindered or continue to hinder any of our fellow brothers and sisters.” Schembechler shifts from the more flowery language representing his mistakes and postures, stating seemingly obvious truths that are clearly meant to stand in contrast with his behavior. However, is there such a need to emphasize the obvious — that slavery and Jim Crow were detrimental for the Black community? Schembechler’s mechanism is not unlike a student whose punishment is to write lines on a chalkboard: it’s an outward display of what was wrong with his actions, but doesn’t go further than the chalk itself.
The section following this just rehashes the seemingly ephemeral nature of online interactions that Schembechler espouses on — something else that Pappalardo makes note of arguing against — and reemphasizing his “contributions” to the Black community through his work with the NFL. Schembechler proceeds to round out the statement with the end of his mother’s story, detailing how she died from adrenal cancer and how her death led to funds directed at the University for presently life-saving cancer research, intertwining that “diagnosis to death was just nine months. But a death on social media can happen even faster.” His final conclusion is thus: “Tragedy led to triumph.” The paragraphs that follow reemphasize the nature of his actions as a mistake, one that went against the doctrine of his family and God but nonetheless a mistake. He then asks to be forgiven as God and his mother would forgive him — something he believes he can earn through highlighting his career, connection to the University and the legacy of those who came before him.
There is power in the pain of losing his mother that Schembechler invokes, and my sympathy is with him in that matter as one of God’s children, as a brother. I cannot in good faith turn my same lens of analysis to Schembechler’s firing compared to the death of his mother nor his assured forgiveness from God and his mother.
Recall the disclaimer of Pappalardo’s analysis, that the decision of forgiveness does not lie with him or the white population. I am not white, and I am not concerned with something as insubstantial and ineffective as forgiveness. Forgiveness does not dispel the centuries of inequality anti-Black rhetoric contributes to, and forgiveness does not revive the trans people murdered by those inspired through transphobic rhetoric. Let’s take the parallels that Schembechler employed and follow them to their logical end. The death of Schembechler’s mother was a tragedy, one that arose from unexamined forces not yet thoroughly understood. To correct this cosmic mistake for the future, Schembechler’s family led the charge to raise funds for the research of the cause to ensure it could not happen again. Actions speak infinitely louder than words and do infinitely more than a plea for forgiveness. Glenn Edward Schembechler III is reportedly worth $10 million, and his decision to pay out to a PR firm to write his statement instead of doing anything else — anything to the communities he contributed to the degradation of, anything to follow the example his family set — should speak infinitely louder than his op-ed. Repent, Schembechler.
MiC Columnist Saarthak Johri can be reached at sjohri@umich.edu.