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Nowhere is racial bigotry more starkly communicated than during coverage of the NFL draft.
If you're interested in the race of a recently-drafted player, you don't need to glance up to look at the guy's photo. No, just listen to the commentators: White draftees are "lunchpail guys" who have "motors that won't quit." Black players are "natural athletes" with "character issues."
Then we move on to the narration of the game film where we see white players "fight through blocks," while black players "seem to glide to the ball."
It's amazing that in sports, which has the most racially diverse workforce this side of political campaign ads, these reflexive racial stereotypes are so persistent. But persist they do.
Which is why we wish we'd been watching when the Seahawks picked Jordan Kent. Kent's father, Ernie, (Oregon's hoops coach), is black. His mother, Dianna, is white.
We're curious to see whether Kent gets lumped into the "natural athlete" category--he's certainly that, he lettered in football, basketball and track at Oregon, the first NCAA Division I player to do that in five years--or the "lunchpail guy" world--he's that too, he was a whirling dervish of defense and rebounding as a Duck basketball player.
The thing that's so ridiculous is that you simply can't play in the NFL, or any professional sport, without being a jaw-dropping athlete. Dave Barry captured the experience of actually trying to play a sport with a professional in a profile of Heat backup center Grant Long (a consummate lunch-pail guy).
Even the most marginal NBA player is an absurdly better athlete than an ordinary person. When basketball people say that Grant Long can't shoot, can't pass, can't dribble, what they mean is: He can shoot, pass and dribble better than you, better than anybody you know, better than all but a few hundred people in the world. Long's jump shot is so bad, by NBA standards, that his team never runs a play designed to set him up for it; but you could practice your jump shot every day forever and still never beat him in a game of Horse.Our point is, describing a black NFL prospect as a great "natural athlete" is not only marginally bigoted, it's totally stupid. These commenters obviously don't have anything intelligent to say, so they fall back on lame, meaningless stereotypes. They aren't really racist, they're just lazy. Talk about not bringing your lunchpail.One day Long and I were standing on the floor of the Miami Arena, talking. I was bouncing a basketball, and suddenly Long flicked his hand out, stole the ball, and started dribbling it. I tried to steal it back. I tried hard to steal it back, for about 30 seconds, and I never once touched it, despite the fact that Long, nearly a foot taller than I, was bouncing it to the height of my chest, and was making no effort to back away from me, or use his body as a shield.
The problem was that I was operating in Normal Person Time, which is slow motion for an NBA player. Long would be bouncing the ball so that it passed a foot from my hand, and I'd make my craftiest, slickest, lightning- quickest move for it, and Long - looking at me, not the ball - would casually alter the dribble, flick the ball through his legs, pick it up on the other side, leaving me lunging at air, time and again. But in the NBA, this is a guy whose ball-handling skills are considered to be zero. This is a guy who, if everything went according to the Heat game plan, would not dribble the ball once.
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Interesting post, Seth. I wonder, then, if you would take umbrage with my post over at Metblogs describing Isaiah Stanback as a great athlete but not a gifted quarterback. My point was to imply that he has the potential to learn other positions that may be better suited to his skills than quarterback. The Cowboys seem to agree.
Eric Crouch (a white guy) was also an amazing athlete. The Rams thought so highly of his athletic ability that they drafted the former Nebraska QB in order to convert him to WR.
Listening to Kiper, et. al. this weekend was painful. Really painful. But I think describing someone as an "athlete" isn't necessarily lazy or bigoted.
Gregg Easterbrook made a simiar point on ESPN.com's Page 2 this past week (although I think his point is less founded in actual fact, since he is the only NFL writer pompous enough to refer to these kids as "Collegians")
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This winter I received an e-mail from Jamar Cartwright of Chicago, pointing out that in the same paragraph of a 2006 column, I referred to a white college senior as a "collegian" and a black senior as a "prospect." Race wasn't mentioned in the paragraph or relevant to it, but Cartwright found subconscious significance in the choice of terms: "'Collegian' is a positive word, every father wants his son to be a collegian. 'Prospect' implies some sort of automaton, just a machine for running and tackling." He continued, "I can't back my point with hard proof, but I bet that if you paid close attention, you would find sportswriters and sportscasters rarely call white athletes hoping to enter the NFL or NBA 'prospects,' while constantly using this term for young black males." Is this PC oversensitivity or is there subtle coding involved in describing aspiring African-American players as "prospects"? Draft weekend seems a time to test this question, so I will pay attention and ask readers to do the same
Hey Ryan--didn't see your post. When you are talking about Isaiah Stanback, who finished 5th in the Pac-10 100m sprint, it's hard not to mention his athletic ability. I'm sure I've described him as athletic myself.
My problem is, in the context of a draft of about 250 players, describing more than a handful as great athletes is rather lazy. It would be like an announcer at a dog show pointing out every time a contestant came out that it had four legs. It's dumb, more than anything, which seems to go hand in hand with bigotry.
seattlest needs more culture and less sports.
yes, i said it. the more sports i see here, the less worth i assign to seattlest.
Seth,
Thanks for the continuing sports commentary... Seattle has plenty of professional and semiprofessional culture commentators. At any rate, I can't believe the Hawks drafted Kent... ugh. At least we can say the Hawks cut him when the day comes.
Your taxes hard at work.
I will not rest until no Black man anywhere has to suffer the humiliation, ridicule, and indignity of being called a natural athlete
Kind of like what Dan Patrick has said in the past: if a black athlete can string together a coherent english sentence, he is "articulate". If a white player does the same, he is merely a white athlete.
You all have way too much time on your hands with that axe to grind.