I'll keep voting this way, brother. The other side is against everything good and decent, including racial justice.
I was in Germany maybe 15 (plus or minus) years ago, and a very important person whose name and station will remain nameless,
asked why there were not (then) many black quarterbacks. He put me on the spot at a dinner table of perhaps
a dozen. Without hesitation I said racism. And it's simply true, now and then. When you are in a situation where
you know you sort of carry your country with you, often you mince words and stay safe. I was proud of myself.
I think he was testing me to see if I would say something racist.
Nope.
When I was growing up it was said that black men weren’t cerebral enough to play quarterback. Sure, we were fast, quick, and strong, but quarterbacks had to be strong and quick thinking .. that was the excuse, but today black quarterbacks are all over the league and the chiefs paid their black quarterback nearly a half billion dollars.
I remember when basketball teams could only have a couple of blacks on the court at any one time. Then, what I consider THE most influential sports game ever was played, the 1966 NCAA college Basketball Championship game was played. Kentucky vs Texas -Western, a small school that recruited black players. Kentucky was heavily favored with Pat Riley as its star player. But from the very moment the game started it was apparent that Kentucky was out-classed and getting dunked on at will. Texas-Western blew Kentucky out, and that game changed sports forever. Schools like Louisville and UNLV STARTED RECRUITING BLACK PLAYERS and finding huge success in their programs even though they were small schools than their competition. It got so bad that the NCAA and the NBA banned dunking and prohibited players UNDER 18 from participating, even though white baseball players under 18 were signing professional contracts and could play Major League Baseball. It’s were the term “White men can’t jump” was first coined. Today, the NBA is almost 80% black and the NFL has like numbers with black quarterbacks starting in at least half the teams. We couldn’t play golf because we weren’t allowed in the clubhouse, couldn’t play tennis until Althea Gibson ang Arthur Ashe kicked the doors down. Couldn’t swim or engage in women’s gymnastics because black womens bodies were somehow different. Today the Williams sisters, Simone Biles, and Tiger Woods have risen to the top of their games and beyond.
Point being, I’ve been watch this slow dance for most of my life and I’ve learned to accept the truth that we cannot be stopped. We cannot be stopped .. just too damn good. No doors were opened out of a sense of fairness, none of them. They all had to be kicked down, and that is true for women, gays, and every other nonwhite group of people. Today Hispanics dominate the baseball world. Indeed the evolution is slow, but it’s ladting. Hiring black coaches is a judgement call because coaches can’t out jump their competition nor can they beat the competition with a more powerful serve, nor perform a gymnastic move no one has ever seen before.
Today I want to see white people invested in sports because we virtually do,instead the sports we play and everything black in sports is not good for the game, not good for America. That being said, black coach hiring is on the horizon .i is inevitable. The NBA IS THE MOST CONCIOUS SORTS LEAGUE ON THE PLANET, BUT EVEN IT LAGS IN THE HIRING OF BLACK COACHES.
WE HAVE RISEN TO THE POINT WHERE WE CAN AFFORD TO BE JUST A BIT MORE PATIENT . THEIR TIME WILL COME.
Celebrating the memory of Jesse Owens and what he did to Hitler and the fraud of an “Aryan Nation” in the 1936 Olympics. It was a beautiful thing to behold.