It's always dangerous, but never boring, when a newspaper sports columnist uncorks a political thesis. Enter Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel. Bianchi thinks that there are some unsung heroes who deserve credit for helping put a black man in the White House - and they are athletes. "If you're searching for tangible reasons why it became possible for Barack Obama to make his historic run at the presidency ... look no further than the golf course, basketball court or football field."
Bianchi believes that, since sports have conditioned white America to accept African-Americans as heroes and leaders, black sportsmen deserve a pat on the back. He wonders: "Where else but sports can you go to Amway Arena and see 15,000 mostly white fans cheer and celebrate the accomplishments of a team that is mostly black?"
Sounds lovely. But it happens to be embarrassingly wrong - and an insult to the reason that millions waited on long lines to cast their vote.
For more than a century, masses of white audiences have cheered black entertainers and athletes. And for most of that time, blacks struggled mightily to climb the corporate or political ladder. Why? Because being wowed by the ability of blacks to perform on a field or stage is not in the same ballpark as accepting their political leadership. Not even close.
More to the point, the rare black athletes who have dared to make waves have been pilloried for not knowing their place. After men like Jack Johnson, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith and John Carlos got too political, the phrase "just shut up and play" emerged - to smack down future jocks for trying to do more than entertain.
This is not just a hypocrisy of the musty past. On Thursday, Denver Broncos wide receiver Brandon Marshall caught the winning touchdown pass against the Cleveland Browns. He then - horror of horrors - wanted to take out a black and white glove to make a statement. "I wanted to create that symbol of unity because Obama inspires me, our multicultured society," he later said.
But we will never know how the public might have received even this tame message because teammates, led by Brandon Stokely, put the kibosh on him. Commentators then came down on Marshall like blitzing linebackers. ESPN anchor Neil Everett said, "It's not about you and what you think. It's about the team."
Our sport-mad culture has hardly softened the ground for black political leadership. If anything, it's produced a value system that prizes material gain and the almighty scoreboard over any kind of collective responsibility.
This is seen even more clearly when we look at the three figures that Bianchi holds up as the most crucial trailblazers: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy.
Bianchi writes, "the two most successful product pitchmen of the modern era - Tiger and Michael Jordan - are both black men who won over white corporate America." But at what cost? These are also the two most aggressively apolitical athletes to ever walk the earth. They live by the creed that taking serious stands gets in the way of good business. If anything, Obama has had to overcome the racial landscape these two have charted, which says you must wear the cool mask and betray nothing.
Dungy is a different case. One of the most respected coaches in the NFL, he is also an evangelical Christian who has raised funds for the Indiana Family Institute. IFI organizes anti-gay marriage initiatives and takes part in the process of what's called "praying the gay away."
In fact, when you think about it, Woods, Jordan and Dungy - signifying respectively disengagement, corporate greed and the right-wing side of the culture wars - hold the values many voters wanted to repudiate.
No doubt, black American athletes unafraid to be political will be part of charting us out of this wilderness. But it will not be those content to be money-making sideshows when the main stage is a real-world battle for change.
Dave Zirin, Press Action's 2005 and 2006 Sportswriter of the Year, has been called "an icon in the world of progressive sports". Robert Lipsyte says he is "the best young sportswriter in the United States." He is both a columnist for SLAM Magazine, and a regular contributor to the Nation Magazine and the author of the forthcoming “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press.
You can receive his column Edge of Sports,
every week by going to http://zirin.com/edgeofsports/?p=subscribe&id=1.
Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com]
Dave is the author of the new book "Welcome to the Terrordome:" with an intro by Chuck D (Haymarket).
His first book is "What's My Name, Fool?" Sports and Resistance in the United States" (Haymarket Books) has entered its second printing and is available in stores and at Haymarketbooks.org
I thought of Jim Brown, Bill Russell and Muhammad Ali, not Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, when I thought of our first black President.
And then I thought of what an absolutely racist, pathetic sentiment it was that placed a black man in the Whitehouse because, "they seemed ready."
White America is having a nervous breakdown, it seems, and has invited us all in on the fun.
Word up, jackasses: every single time this country needed someone to do the heavy lifting in the social or cultural department, they've hired a black man to do it for them. No thankless job is too big to stick on a black man.
Despicable. Idiots. Have. No. Clue.
by
Richard Volaar (26 articles, 0 quicklinks, 133 diaries, 410 comments)
on Monday, November 10, 2008 at 5:45:41 AM
Never invited to the White House, had to eat at "black only" restaurants while his teammates traveled in relative luxury, but if there is anyone out there who doesn't remember the crowd of Aryans cheering "JES-SIE! JES-SIE!" while Hitler came close to a heart attack, then they have missed out on history every bit as awesome as President Obama. There are moments when the world changes -- not just the leader, but the world.
Tiger Woods, bah. Golf, bah. Beating all the odds -- now THAT'S history.
What you have to know about Mike, though, is that his tongue is always so far out in his cheek that he'd look like McCain if you ever saw him square in the face. His JOB is to make sports funny. It's like Dave Barry reporting on politics. "Florida, not a normal state."
by
The Die Hard (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Monday, November 10, 2008 at 8:38:31 AM
Tiger has transcended racial boundaries with his excellence and won the admiration of the world to such an extent that, at least subliminally, it is very plausible to me that Barack was received more open-mindedly by a host of Americans because he also transcends racial boundaries and displays such excellence. The differences in domains of excellence are obvious, but the fact that Obama can sink a jump shot from twenty feet doesn't hurt! Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and a few others--even O.J. before the murders--have deeply embedded themselves in our subconscious. I not only don't think Bianci is wrong but I am inclined to think he is probably right. It's a matter of shattering stereotypes and being taken seriously as an individual. Russell, Ali, Jordan and Wood have done that--and paved the way for Obama. Which is all to the good for us as a nation and for rest of the world.
by
Jim Fetzer (24 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 37 comments)
on Tuesday, November 11, 2008 at 12:25:52 PM
Black athletes? Or rather the internet in general?
Maybe athletes like Tiger Woods paved the way for Obama's victory. But those athletes are not always role models, e.g. Barry Bond, O J Simpson etc. It's rather the new technology that helped Obama. Here is an interesting article from Wired magazine:
--If President-elect Barack Obama had run in 2004, he would not have won the election, says HuffingtonPost founder and political pundit Arianna Huffington. That's partly due to the variety of web 2.0 technologies that were available to the Obama campaign that either weren't around or weren't used effectively during the last election -- both in terms of fundraising and distribution of information.
"Were it not for the internet, Barack Obama would not be president," said Huffington, while speaking on a panel at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco(destinations). "Were it not for the internet, he wouldn't even have been the democratic nominee. By contrast, the McCain campaign didn't have a clue. The problem wasn't the age of the candidate, it was the age of the idea."
"The internet has killed Karl Rove's politics. Those of us in the blogosphere suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, so after Sarah Palin told us she had always been opposed to the bridge to nowhere at the Republican Convention, online there was an obsessive campaign to prove it wrong. And the McCain campaign repeated the line for a few days, and then they stopped because they couldn't get away with it. In 2004, they would have gone on repeating it."
But that means that politicans have to watch everything they do now.
"We have now entered a phase where you are always exposed," said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. "I have to watch myself singing 'I left my heart in San Francisco' on YouTube and it won't go away. I can't get it to go away. [The internet is] an extraordinary thing, but I do think there will be a lot of collateral damage as we come to the realization that we're in a reality TV show."--
my thinking about unionizing tennis, but maybe Dave's just too busy with Important Things to read comments on his pieces.
I've been mentally working on bringing a little union consciousness to professional tennis players. And posting occasional comments at TennisTV. Tennis is a TRULY international sport, unlike soccer for example or golf. And of course, the very thought of Tiger's possible incapacitation and bringing a little union consciousness to GOLF raises the question of whether Tiger would be any less unreceptive to the idea than Andre Aggassi for example, or Jimmy Conners (just to stick with Americans).
Are you kidding me? Golf is a Rich Americans game - you play it for 30 years and get filthy rich, then retire and get richer. In tennis, your career is over by the time you're 30, and the senior circuit is a joke. In tennis, the household names are not American names.
Now, don't anyone try to make a point out of the ATP and (the WTA) in fact BEING the players' unions. The ATP has a "Players Council" - which is like the Teamster's in the 1950's having a "Truck Drivers Council." Gimme a break. Tennis players can't decide the first thing about players' conditions of play - not what tournaments they have to play (to qualify for the BIG money events), not whether lines are called by remote versus linespersons; not even whether tournaments are played at night or during the day. It is, from a union standpoing, ridiculous.
And where is Marvin Miller, when the (international) owners throw the same old line to the tennis players that baseball owners threw baseball players in the 1970's? You know, "Hundreds of players are just waiting to take your places." Well, he's over 90 and alive, and I hope to God well.
Now, I've said my spiel. On the main question: I agree that Tiger's presence in the consciousness of white Americans helped Obama win this month.
And I sure hope when he's out of the Young Man's Venue for competitive golf, Tiger will do something about unionizing the sport. Anyone wanna bet that he WON'T stick to private charity and not touch labor issues with a ten-foot pole?
by
GLloyd Rowsey (72 articles, 18 quicklinks, 45 diaries, 565 comments)
on Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at 8:24:00 AM
7 comments
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