Obama’s Success: Must Have Been The Shoes Before Him
America, indeed humanity, stands on the verge of a seminal moment in history. A turning point that inalienably alters our existence in so many ways, writ large and small, that it is hard to grasp. We are about to to inaugurate a black man, Barack Obama, President of the United States; a job that is still, despite all, the singularly most important and powerful position in the world. How did we get to this moment?
It is time to talk about race, and in a positive and constructive manner, not the sinister and tawdry below the surface baiting style so prevalent during much of the McCain/GOP campaign we just, thankfully, concluded. What has led us to the point where Barack Obama is about to give his first inaugral address; what paved the way for that? It just might, at least partially, be the shoes.
Specifically, the shoes worn by transcendental black athletes like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Venus and Serena Williams and Arthur Ashe. Athletes not just dominant in their sport, but in sports that were previously the exclusive province of whites. In the case of Tiger, the Williams sisters and Arthur Ashe, it was their sports; sports that were once, and still remain, not just white, but elite. In Jordan’s case, although in a sport long integrated, basketball, he became literally the face of the league and the most marketable and recognizable persona in advertising in the whole world.
One of the great gifts to sports journalism, really the literary field as a whole, in the last half century was the late Dick Schapp. A truly enlightened and renaissance man. One of the many enduring gifts Schapp left is a weekly sports roundtable discussion every Sunday morning on ESPN, The Sports Reporters. Not just any sports reporters, but giants that, like Schapp, transcend the field of sports with a view of the larger frame of the world. Journalists like Mike Lupica, Mitch Albom and Bob Ryan. On the October 5, 2008 edition of The Sports Reporters John Saunders, who has led the The Sports Reporters since Schapp’s untimely death, gave a fascinating parting shot (It is the approximately last two minutes of the linked podcast, which is very easy to fast forward to).
Saunders’ take was that Obama has had a surprisingly smooth and seamless run for the Presidential roses considering the historical context of black and white racial undertow of tension. Further, that one of the reasons for this is the way that certain black athletes, specifically Tiger Woods and Venus and Serena Willaims have come to be the singular calling cards of their sports, golf and tennis respectively. Saunders posits that the significance is immense because both golf and tennis have been historically not just the domain of whites, although that they have been, but elite and powerful whites. The country club set; power brokers that really run things. Elegant and compelling individuals, Woods and the Williams; black in skin color, magnetic, inspirational and colorless champions in conduct and ethos.
We can all see, and appreciate, the progressive evolution of attitudes on race. We long have celebrated barrier breakers leading the way like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron. But Saunders is on to something here. Legendary agents of change are among us today, in their athletic prime, in the form of Tiger, Venus and Serena. Wonderful role models and avatars that have built upon the efforts of their racial predecessors, and are now able to be the leaders of their sports and societal symbols for who they are and what they have done, without the added characterization as "black". Tiger isn’t black; Tiger is just Tiger. Same with the Williams sisters, they are just Venus and Serena. This is a quite remarkable thing actually, something that even Muhammad Ali couldn’t pull off; but Obama has been able to do it. Obama wasn’t a black candidate; Obama was just a candidate. Barack Obama is not a black leader, he is our leader. Period.
Outstanding. It’s about time. This is real and tangible progress being built and expanded right in front of our eyes, and we should appreciate it as such. It is a transcendental and transformative moment.
As cogent as John Saunders’ thoughts were, I would suggest that it should be taken one step further to really fill out this part of the racial progress story. In fairness to John, the parting shots on The Sports Reporters are just that; relatively brief quick takes, so he did not have the luxury of the extended format allowed here. The additional elements I would add are Arthur Ashe and Michael Jordan.
Ashe was really the progenitor of the color neutral athlete transcending his sport and impacting on the social conscience in the broader sense. Indeed, considering that he was operating in a far different and more volatile atmosphere two decades before even Jordan, Arthur Ashe may be the most remarkable of those discussed herein; his commitment to social justice, health and humanitarian issues left a mark on the world as indelible as his tennis was on the court. And as with the others, he did it with dignity and grace in a sport and stage that was exclusive and white.
Michael Jordan became simply the most recognizable and marketable personality in the world. Granted, not in a lily white country club sport such as golf or tennis, but Jordan’s impact became so much more than simply his basketball. Never before had a black attained the iconic status of Michael Jordan, without still being categorized as "black". As with Tiger, Michael was simply Michael. To black and white, to rich and poor, to the powerful and the powerless, he was just Michael. Must have been the shoes.
And the wonderful part is that the shift to color neutrality is not over; it is spreading like wildfire. The one picture above that most will not recognize is that of Lewis Hamilton, the newly crowned Formula One Grand Prix World Champion. This remarkable man, all of age 23, is the spitting image of a young Tiger Woods. If you think what Obama and Tiger have accomplished is earth shattering, picture this: A black youth from England, driving for a German team, winning across the globe and securing his championship in Brazil. Like the others, he is just Lewis. It is a beautiful thing.
We may not be there yet, but the promised land is starting to appear on the horizon. Dr. King may not have lived to see it, but we are getting closer and closer to the day where human beings "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character". So, in a time where there is so much war, death, hunger and financial despair, let us celebrate and give thanks for that which is remarkable and good in our midst.
Happy Thanksgiving Folks!
What a great post. It explains a lot about why Obama and why now. I was born and raised n Raleigh NC when it was a really small town. Cary didn’t even have a traffic signal. I sneaked into the lunch counter sit-ins.
I never thought I would live to see this profound barrier broken. I have hope again.
Happy Thanksgiving to all and especially the gifted contributors here.
Excellent post, bmaz! However, I suspect ya wrote it solely to mention the F-1 results…!
Unlike the other athletes, Ashe was an advocate for People with AIDS (he had contracted it through a transfusion and for lesbians and gays. Though a straight man, he became a human rights advocate for people who were utterly despised.
That’s impressive.
It really was impressive. And he did it within the quiet, natural framework that was him. That was kind of my point in including him. The real focus of the John Saunders comment that put this thought in my head was on the more recent people that immediately preceded Obama’s meteoric rise. Then as I was working through it, I realized that Arthur Ashe was in a way a prototype for the color neutral groundbreaking avatar in elite white sport. I think you could make that argument for Althea Gibson as well.
Many years ago, while playing Trivial Pursuit, I answered the sports question – Who was the first black to win at Wimbledon? – with Althea Gibson. Nope. According to the card, Arthur Ashe. Evonne Goolagong won at Wimbledon before Arthur did too. There may be others for all I know.
So the next obstacle to overcome is a woman as POTUS.
Although Evonne Goolagong is definitely a person of color, she was not “black” if you go by the common connotation of the term as someone with Sub-Saraha African ancestry dating back no more than a few centuries. She was an Australian aborigine.
Agreed, but I thought it apropos in the context of the posting. Tiger Woods is of very mixed heritage, one-eighth (American) aboriginal.
Who was the first Australian to win a Wimbledon final?
Who was the first Australian woman to win a Wimbledon final?
Who were the first two Australians to face each other in a Wimbledon final?
What is the highest elected office in the USA ever occupied by a Native American?
Might that have been Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Mr. Why?
I don’t know the answer, just thought it a relevant question to throw out there when discussing Trivial Pursuit.
.
First of all, let’s get one thing straight: Race is not a scientific concept, it is a “social construction,” in anthropological lingo. The U.S. race categories, flawed as they are, are “White,” “Black,” etc. not White and “African-American.” Historically, Black meant Black, and that included Australian Aborigines, because it was founded on a visual perception, not a genealogical profile.
There are two things bmaz is pointing to, and that the comments have been focusing on:
1. “Black” individuals dominating a sport previously dominated by “Whites,”
2. People of color, of multiple ancestry, who resist categorization.
I think Obama, and Tiger Woods, more represent the second category than the first. Venus and Serena represent the first. No one is confused about whether or not they are “Black,” even if that category is flawed from the get-go. No one was confused about whether Michael Jordan is “Black.”
There are other important national figures who paved the way for Obama and helped him stand as a “transracial” figure, such as Harry Belafonte, and our airwaves are increasingly populated by transracial personalities such as Lurita Doan as GSA administrator, and Alison Stewart, the journalist who has substituted for Olberman, and for Maddow. These I would consider my type #2: Increasingly, it just doesn’t make sense to try to figure out what “race” they are, because it just doesn’t matter.
Bob in HI
Good point. In the UK, for a while, “black” became shorthand among the left for anyone not Caucasian. This had some interesting effects. In the 70s there was a famous very active “black” lawyer of South Asian extraction who I personally knew to be (or at last as a student to have been)about as racist on the subject of those of African descent as it was possible to be. He had inadvertantly taught me not to take the simple view that only us whites can be racist.
Different cultures (and subcultures) have different standards of “racial classification” and these are often fluid. In South Africa there were Blacks, Coloureds, and Whites. People of South and Southeast Asian (Malay) ancestry were put in the “Coloured” category along with an indigenous group of Khoi-speaking ancestry…but Japanese were “made “honorary whites” because of the investments they were making in the country. In fact. many Afrikaaners actually had black or Khoi ancestors…but were traditionally categorized as “white”.
In Brazil there are about a gazillion different categories all ranked by level of White degree of admixture with African and/or Native American ancestry. Something similar occurred in ante-bellum New Orleans. This was actually the situation elsewhere in south before the “one-drop” rule hardened. One can go into the census records in Georgia and the Carolinas in the 1830’s and 1840’s and find free “Mulattos” that had farms and were working as skilled artisans.
Great post, bmaz. Thanks. As I was reading it and began to get the sense of your intent the name of Althea Gibson immediately crossed my mind as in the league you were discussing. I’m glad to see that you included her at least as an afterthought in the comments.
By the way, the first picture at the top of the post is indeed Ashe playing impromptu tennis with RFK. It was at a campaign stop not too long before Kennedy’s unfortunate death. It is taken from a framed original photo print that was give no me maybe 15 years or so ago by my brother in law. I originally thought it was taken in New York, maybe Harlem; however, One person that has seen it says he thinks it was in Oakland California. Way cool photo though; one of my favorites.
so this is the one you’ve been holding on to? Well done. I felt it was Jordan, but especially Tiger, that put the issue of race over the top. An icon that you saw every day and exuded cool.
Thanks for the post.
My favorite is John Jordan O’Neal. You might know him as Buck.
His ability and work ethic no doubt would have taken him to the Bigs, but racial discrimination barred the way.
But Buck held no grudges.
Buck said he was “right on time”
“Our kids can’t grow up doing evil for evil,” he warned. “If you spit in my face and I spit in yours, what happens next? But if you spit in my face and I forgive you for it, you might become ashamed of what you’re done. If I forgive you, I might change you.”
He played on nine championship teams, appeared in three Negro American League All Star games and two Negro League World Series, and managed the Monarchs to five pennants and two Negro League World Series titles.
Give love. Turn hate around. Buck O’Neal did it all his life.
Wonderful post, thank you. In addition to the great strides forward with Tiger and Venus and others, the manner in which their wins and advancement into an increasingly color-neutral society have happened are important.
Jackie Robinson was vilified and received death threats. Tiger and Venus and Serena–pretty much no fuss, with general acceptance by the larger society. The usual dead-enders have derided them and also Obama, but on the whole there’s been greatly reduced drama.
So I am hopeful that we are making progress that way, as well.
One of the funny things I discovered working with archeologists who did famous digs in Argentina, Iberia, Germany, and the Levant, was that often they found artifacts, reconstructed events and entire civilizations, gathered bones, but had no idea what color the people’s skin had been. Once, after working with oriental people starting businesses and simply serving them in a background research capacity or even less conspicuous tasks, I felt the beginning of a difficult conversation one day talking with a woman whose evident respect for her five millenia of civilization as a modern female of oriental parentage was going to complicate our having something like a peer relationship, my ancestry clearly from my appearance being other; fortunately, we both had visited lands which oriental people had settled in prehistoric times, and we both had observed human genotypes with various gradations of melting pot; in some of those countries aboriginal peoples often have a somewhat isolated gene pool, whereas in other nations the visible differences of so-called race, or ethnicity, are blurred. Mentioning our travels seemed to dissolve an awkward moment, giving way to some wonderment of which boat exactly our respective forebears had ridden on adventures, and how there is a sliding scale of ethnicity.
Great post!
I might quibble on some of the details, however. You’re absolutely right on about Tiger Woods. However, the identities/personae of Venus & Serena are more like Jackie Robinson than Tiger.
But I’d draw your attention to some non-sports figures in the proto-Obama mold:
* Harry Belafonte
* News anchor/journalist Alison Stewart
* Lurita Doan, GSA Administrator (Yes, THAT one)
There are more, and that is part of the point: American “Blacks” have become so mixed that it no longer makes sense to think of all of them as “Black.” I picked Lurita and Alison as examples in part because it was weeks after I first saw them that I first realized that they were considered, or considered themselves as, “Black.” This is especially the case when persons of mixed Black/White ancestry are also part Asian. Our racial categories start to fray and fall apart, until they stop making any sense.
Which, after all, is the way it should be. Because race categories don’t make any sense. And that could be one of America’s most long-lasting contributions to human sensibility: that Racial types don’t make sense. It would be a wonderful legacy to leave the world.
Bob in HI
Yesterday afternoon, NPR played an interview with Hugh Jackman about his new film, Australia. One of the things the film touches on is “the Stolen Generation” — the hundred-thousand-plus children of mixed white and aboriginal heritage who were literally stolen from their parents in a quasi-ethnic-cleansing program that began in the late 19th century and lasted into the 1970s, a period of over eighty years. :
I heard this broadcast, too. A sobering point.
Bob in HI
I thought it was still going on in isolated areas of Australia. There was an Aussie actress of partial Aboriginal ancestry that was trying to publicize it. Can’t remember any more than this….
Totally OT, but if you haven’t read it already, you really ought to:
From the NYT’s Richard Cohen – A Command of the Law
Oops! That should be – From the NYT’s
RichardRoger Cohen – A Command of the LawThanks to SouthernDragon for catching that need byline correction!
Bill Cosby captured me.
Roger Cohen
Richard is a wanker
I would like to add the incredible likeability and presence of Will Smith as a reassuring figure who contributed to this harmonic convergence.
Jesse Owens. His was a powerful contribution, not just of overcoming the “color bar,” but symbolizing triumph of the human spirit over fascism.
Another important step in this process was Warren Moon. I believe his success as quarterback helped put to bed a bias against African Americans in sports leadership roles (although there is still a ways to go in respect to coaching positions).
Yeah, his repeat spousal abuse and battery issues really militate against that.
Many athletes, including Doug Williams said what an inspiration it was to see Warren Moon as QB …
Doug Williams was the first black QB to win a Super Bowl … shredding Elway and the JonCos 42-10 … he was also named MVP.
This piece pulled so many things together for me I am so pleased I stumbled upon it. Four the past four years I have been trying to tell people what the Obama moment could be all about. Folks said yes, that would be nice. Others said yes it is time. Then some said: “He is unelectable.” Two weeks ago those same folk were saying: “You were right and I am glad.”
Being able to stand back and assess what is going on in culture, capturing this “seminal moment” is a great gift. Thanks for opening this wisdom up and laying it out there for us.
What we learned from sports is that when someone is really good at something, it is more fun to watch them, regardless of race, religion or whatever, than to watch someone more like yourself who is not as good. The same thing is true about singers and guitar players. Who the heck cared the race or age or sexual preference of Jimi Hendrix, or his tattoos or anything else. I don’t know anything about him, but when All Along the Watchtower comes on the radio, I sound just like he does, at least in my ears.
Music, Food & Love transcends all boundaries … as does meditation !
… sorry for the shameless plug … *g*
I am convinced if not for the vile hatred of bush, obama could not have won this cycle.
I would have guessed it would take being a vp or sec of state before a man of color would win president
bush has indeed brought us together after all
OT for behind the scenes folk:
For the last week or so, the Emptywheel site has been freezing Firefox for me when I first load it, especially if I forget and try to scroll down the page before if finishes loading. None of the other FDL sites are doing this to me. I’m on Vista Home Premium.
Outstanding post, bmaz. I regret that Jim Thorpe’s accomplishments did not do as much for native americans.
Great post bmaz but Mclaren a GERMAN team? Last time I looked Woking was still just up the road in good old England and Ron Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh were British. OK so it’s got a German motor and there’s lots of Mercedes money but it isn’t German.
They run German colors, specifically silver. To the F1 people I know, people who knew and, in at least two instances, raced with Bruce McLaren all treat it like a German team because it is the Mercedes factory team. But I am aware of your point.
Still the Union Jack that goes up behind the podium and the British National Anthem that gets played. Do I detect some anti-Brit prejudice here? Anyway, Lewis is ours and the Germans can’t have him!
OT
chris-matthews-running-for-specter’s-seat on 538
In a sense race as a category doesn’t make sense, unless in practice you happen to live in that category, and then, until things change, it matters a lot.
We aren’t immune in this country, either, although our categories and problems are slightly different. I see Mr Why thinking about aboriginals a few times above, and that’s always front-of-mind for Canadian progressives. It’s simply maddening how badly so many of our governments have dealt with the First Nations. But in some parts of the country, the popular prejudice still runs deep, which is how our governments get away with behaving badly. That is easily our greatest national shame.
I was going to write more about how much we share these problems with you, but we seem to have a constitutional crisis developing here, which just looks like so much fun to moi. Harper will probably back down and so it will go away for a bit, but it has been wonderful to watch, overnight, a serious opposition finally stand up on its hind legs and challenge the last loyal Bushie left in teh world. He and his nasty finance minister have nothing, nothing to offer re the economic crisis except neocon nastiness, and they seem surprised that the opposition finally got mad at them. Well: we’re all surprised.
Ideally, Harper would be too stubborn to back down; the governor general (the queen’s representative, head of state, a woman born in Haiti) would refuse to dissolve Parliament and would turn to the oppo parties to form a coalition; and we would be moderately happy. That happened once before in our history, and me, I would love to see it done again.
((( skdadl )))
I’m hoping for the latter … that the opposition is called to form the next Gov’t … ‘twould be a great early Christmas present for us !
Running off to lunch, Pet, but yes — I think we have a chance. Yay! *hugs*
That’d definitely be reason to meet for a toast !
*hugs back*
Even with performance enhancing drugs, a sports star cannot really “fake” expertise. But the sad thing is that this administration has faked an awful lot, from it’s “resident” to its “experts” to intelligence gathering, to war, to reasons to hold people and torture them and so on. Isn’t it sad that Obama in some ways has been more vetted than a white man would be?
What a strange, strange world we live in!
Greetings, all
He’s not an athlete, but I draw a line from Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan straight back to…Jimi Hendrix.
Shirley Chisholm and Ed Bradley (60 Minutes) are inspirations, for me.
One of my first heroes was Jesse Owens … he went into Berlin and laid waste to Adolf’s theory of “the superior race”. I still hold him among a handful of inspirations.
Of course, his followers still do not accept that Aryans originated in India and they continue to use our symbol of peace & prosperity (Swas-tika) as their Hate Logo, which reinforces a tenet of yoga/meditation … for evil to exist, ignorance must be prevalent.
I had the honor of singing in a Folk Group for Jesse Owens in Iowa in 1970.I was 16 and had just read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by Schirer. What a pleasure to shake his hand and to hear him speak.
Thanks for including him.
OT- More scandals.
Since I find myself on a Soap Box, I’d like to ask all of you to say a prayer or have a moment of silence for those who perished in Mumbai.
Apparently, Brits, Americans, Canadians and French were among the casualties, along with several Israelis.
For the record, Jews have lived peacefully in India since they fled Gallilee and were given shelter in various Indian Kingdoms. This is the first time in India(that I know of) that Jews were killed in India, in an obvious hate crime.
Dearheart, those souls were absolutely on my “list” last night.
We are all connected, n’est pas?
((( demi )))
Yes, we are all connected
And, when we are aware of that, it’s the key to stopping terrorism at its roots.
IOW, treat friends like you want to be treated.
It’s not just a sweet sentiment, it’s an essential truth and one that can save the world (not the planet).
Before black sports figures, there were these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Airmen
I’m squeamish about boxing, but there are great names there, too. Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Ali, for example.
Does anyone know how to contact the editors of CNN … they keep flashing the Map of India without Kashmir … this is a slap on the face to the people and Gov’t of India.
Folks, there have been many heroic and notable black and minority athletes over the years. The main point of this post was the symbolic transformation made when one of them did it in the sphere of a lilly white sport or situation and was able to do it without being known as “the black baseball player” or “the first black” etc. Basically ones that were able to rise without having to really carry that burden and that carried it to the top of their profession without being categorized as black, it was such an afterthought that it didn’t matter really. I didn’t include Jordan for his basketball, if you read the post, I specifically excluded that. The point with Jordan is how he became the face of advertising, even for rich, powerful whites, but was able to do so because he was Michael, not a black basketball player. There are those that painfully laid the groundwork for the people I am talking about, and those that are, finally, reaping the benefits of that struggle. But the struggle is not over until there is seamless co-existence between races and skin color. We are finally seeing the first glimpses of that really. If we were not, no matter how talented Obama is, he would not be President-Elect. But he is, and that is really a fantastic game changer and corner turner we should be excited and proud about.
Excellent summation and thank you Marcy & bmaz, for all that you continue to do !
Excellent post!
Hope everyone is having a restful and tasty holiday
Bmaz “It is a transcendental and transformative moment”
Excellent read Bmaz. The recent moments that stand out in my mind having to do with “transformative and transcendental” moments are on election day at the Franklin High School off of Broad St in downtown Columbus. I was interviewing and video taping people as they came out of this voting precinct. A young black man came driving by in a beat up car with three of the windows covered with thick glass because of missing windows. He was shouting out on a loud speaker “get to your precinct vote for Obama vote now…NOW”. As he drove by a long strip of grass with young boys playing touch football he began to shout “Obama” The kids shouted back “Obama, Obama Obama”. This chant went back and forth for several moments. Everyone in eye sight was beaming BEAMING!
This is a “transcendental and transformative moment.” I so hope and pray that Obama means what he says and that his cabinet choices will inact his plan “his dream” which he had been calling “our” plan.
ot
Listening to the Winter soldier hearings again over at Democracy Now. Amy Posted them for today. So moving so telling
Visual yes. But people in the United States were classified as black even when they ‘looked white’. That identification is also a social construction. Under slavery, anyone with a slave progenitor who had not been freed was legally a slave — i.e. someone else’s property. The particular American racism descends from that legal category. In the Caribbean and Brazil, they have a phrase: ‘money whitens’. It never did in the United States.
That is for the driver, not the constructor. The constructor is still considered German. Don’t worry, your new era Stirling Moss will stay safely Brit. (and no, Damon didn’t really cut it so much, but Graham did)
Nope BMAZ they also play the National Anthem for the winning constructors, and that is God Save the Queen.
As long as it is German silver instead of British Racing Green, it is German to me. I love the discussion though; it is a reminder of the F1 of old, which was hyper-nationalistic and cars carried the colors of their country, irrespective of the driver.
Let’s not forget Althea Gibson…who of course preceded Arthur Ashe by a generation.
Another athlete that broke the color barrier was figure skater, Debi Thomas
Thomas was a medical microbiology major at Stanford at the time she went to the Olympics, but decided that she wanted a more direct role in helping patients. So she went into engineering when she returned, and has been one of the innovators in the development of orthotic devices and orthopedic transplants. Pretty smart lady.
I think Thomas opened the door for kids of all races to enter these “technical” sports…folks like Kristi Yamaguchi and even the gymnasts.
What I find interesting is these so-called “ivy league” sports as measure of the changes in society that differs from some degree from the “brute force” or “natural sports”. In the early 1900’s it was held that blacks were a “dying race”, going extinct because they were biologically and intellectually inferior.In fact, health statistics showed that blacks suffered from more disease, higher mortality, lower birth weight, were shorter, weaker, etc. than the average white. Thus “race mixing” was feared by the eugenics movement as a way to cause the deterioration of the healthier “superior” white population. Much of this was, of course, the result of poor nutrition, living conditions, unsafe employment, and lack of access to healthcare and educational opportunities. When a few black athletes entered sports they did so in low equipment events like boxing, or track. It’s intriguing that Irish, Jewish and Italian athletes were often their competitors in these events…simply because these were entry level sports performed at county fairs and for urban working classes. If one goes back to the 1910-1930’s one will be surprised at the number of Jewish track athletes and boxers (and basketball players). Athletics was, for them a road out of poverty, and on occasion, into a college (Paul Robeson, recruited for his football prowess, into Harvard). But you won’t find a lot of these folks reflected in participation at the earliest Olympics, since these were still the domain of privately sponsored athletes…usually wealthier elites.
That shifted with state sponsored athletic teams and national sports federations…with the sense that one wanted to “win for national pride”. At that point racial exclusivity waned…and folks like Jim Thorpe and Jesse Owens were able to break through. Suddenly blacks were viewed as “superior physically” because “of their closer proximity to the natural past…and absence of the civilized lethargy”. The same happened in the South, where athletes were often the first to break the color-barriers…of course, intended to allow the schools sports teams to win. This was a mixed blessing…as it actually played into the myth of superior black athleticism, while downplaying intellectual capabilities. The destruction of the myth of a “decaying race” was substituted with one of a physically vigorous, and potentially reproductively explosive, population. That’s the myth that many still hold today…though one might substitute other ethnic groups other than blacks into that conception.
Sorry about this ongoing trivia in an otherwise serious and uplifting thread, but National Pride is at stake here.
Tip, tip … and all that rot ! *g*
If you check out Tiger’s DNA, you’ll discover that he’s some new and advanced kind of life form. His (coughcough) peers and the on-air broadcasters long ago gave up trying to find words. Years ago they were saying “superhuman” in a normal tone of voice. Also on track to become the first billionaire athlete.
I believe that Michael Schumacher either has, or soon will, beat him to it. Schuey was in the vicinity of 800 million back at he start of 2007, and his ownership interests in both Ferrari and Fiat, plus his personal services contracts should get him there before Tiger.
I love this thread. I was a huge Tiger fan from day One. I worked with a very rich white guy who said after Tiger had won at the Colonial, I wish the kid would be more humble!! Yeah, right, as if he, the white guy, knew how to be. Amazing that with Tiger and Obama both we have someone head and shoulders above the crowd. Even the way W and current team have been such a bust is another element of this being truly the time for the change and transformation: All the stars were lined up. And hope and truth came on to center stage. I am so glad I am alive to see this part of the MLK, et al story. Right along with all the dignity and competence that Tiger has brought.
I steer clear of the kultcha issues, as much of the difficulty with addressing the complex of interethnic interaction exists in that nether zone of human relationships and mores. In the abstract, there is a tale about the difficult service at the buffalo fort in SV AZ, which might gloss the post’s themes. Regarding two other comments, I think it is coaching known fact that the shotgun offense is defeatable, if one has a healthy defense squad, and in an epoch when league rules allowed more than a meager 45 players total; that was what allowed shotgun to survive as long as it did when there were athletic Qs; defense rotations worked wonders with the formerly acceptable larger squadsize. In a more difficult realm, one need only listen to the depth of the bard’s own original recording of WatchtowerAllAlong to see where Hendrix strayed into some consumerism, but even Clapton can tell you the geniuses who wrote some of the material Eric has performed are way better on the fretboard and with the inspiration of those compositions, or he might have admitted as much at some historical juncture, except that all the best folks in some way recognized the fusion of genius and expression is somewhat of a gestalt, so likely he never had to frame the concept in interview.
Good point about the “legal” issue of race. Perhaps the most racist society of the 20th century after Nazi Germany was South Africa’s Apartheid government of 1948-1990. Since racism was part of its apartheid policy, everyone HAD to be officially classified into one of the approved racial categories:
I remember reading periodically of the tragic and sometimes absurd consequences of this institutionalized racism. So this was a form of social construction that was legally sanctioned.
The racism that bmaz writes about is not legally sanctioned, but it remains a social construction in our country. I was surprised to learn, for example, that Alison Stewart identifies herself as “Black.” This is, no doubt, because she experienced being treated as “Black” by people seduced by the American social construction of race. Barack Obama, although raised in a primarily White household by a White mother and White grandparents, experienced being considered as Black even though his experience was very different from what Jesse Jackson and John Lewis experienced growing up Black.
Barack Obama’s candidacy succeeded for a number of reasons, and bmaz nips at the corner of one of them. Racial barriers of the mind are being overcome not just by “Blacks” doing well in a previously White-dominated sport, but by race becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Oh, BTW, has anyone mentioned Charlie Pride’s success as a “Country” singer yet?
Bob in HI
nobody mentioned Ray Charles Robinson either
until I saw the flik, I didn’t know Ray Charles WAS a country singer (and I grew up listening to him without knowing)
We have touched on this in other threads, and I admit to finding only some peripherally germane threads that are offsite, yet, at the time of my early and enduring engagement in the colloquies of academia some disenumerated quantity of years ago, the acrid prose of James Baldwin intellectual expatriate, repatriate represented a literary pinnacle, or, rather a recognition of a scar and an intellectual trying to face existence withal. Perhaps significantly, NYT seems to have a paywall around the reviews though has opted to put a potpourri of inchoate testimonials into an obit, and NYorker’s searchengine returns much chaff. As I recall, NYorker in an issue published in 1963-64 excerpted from the essayist’s writing about a freshly imaged visit he had made to MS; it seemed his strident prose was the first to coin goodOlBoys, which says much of those times, and perhaps the flames in his writing reflect as well the reason his voice was among those drawing interest of peacekeepers in DoJ who amassed a substantial dossier on his doings. He was from someplace other than MS, and a death from cancer at 63 was only a skewed statement of the enginess of thought which he launched, maybe some erratic, but among some intelectuals much of worth came of his perspective, however he managed to derive that. It was an eagle’s view.
Footnote to my above, it was RunNshoot for WM.
Wilma Rudolph