Appendix - Matrix - Michigan State University
Appendix - Matrix - Michigan State University
Appendix - Matrix - Michigan State University
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administrations that determine policy in the world of<br />
intercollegiate, amateur, and professional athletics in<br />
America. Equally typical was the response of the sports<br />
editor. He merely shook his head, indicating that he,<br />
too, could not understand such ingratitude, and then<br />
went on about the business of obtaining a publishable<br />
story for next week's issue. All too often too many of<br />
these self-proclaimed guardians of the morals and ethics<br />
of the sports world lend tacit approval to such racially<br />
corrupt and hypocritical attitudes, thus further degrading<br />
and violating the basic human dignity and intelligence<br />
of black athletes.<br />
Recreation and athletics have traditionally been<br />
billed as essentially therapeutic measures-measures<br />
that cure faulty or deteriorating character, that weaken<br />
prejudice, and that bind men of all races and nationalities<br />
closer together. The evidence does not support<br />
the theory. Athletic and recreational centers set up in<br />
high-crime or delinquency areas have become merely<br />
convenient meeting places for criminals and delinquents.<br />
1 Recreational and athletic activities, far from<br />
inhibiting crime, actually have spawned it in both the<br />
amateur and professional areas. As for eliminating<br />
prejudice, whites may grudgingly admit a black man's<br />
prowess as an athlete, but will not acknowledge his<br />
equality as a human being. In athletics, where the<br />
stakes are position, prestige, and money, where intense<br />
competition prevails and a loser is anathema, a white<br />
racist does not change his attitude toward blacks; he<br />
merely alters his inclination to abuse him or discriminate<br />
against him overtly.<br />
Recreational patterns in America widen and perpetuate<br />
racial separation. Recreation is exclusive, compounded<br />
of all sorts of considerations, not the least of<br />
which are racial and economic. There is, therefore,<br />
usually little opportunity for recreation to narrow the<br />
gap between white and black Americans. Moreover,<br />
Preface • xxvi<br />
there is absolutely nothing inherent in recreation that<br />
would change attitudes. Recreation simply refreshes<br />
the mind and body and gives old attitudes a new start<br />
and a fresh impetus.<br />
At an athletic event, by no means are all the bigots<br />
and racists sitting in the stands. They also are on the<br />
field of play.<br />
The roots of the revolt of the black athlete spring<br />
from the same seed that produced the sit-ins, the freedom<br />
rides, and the rebellions in Watts, Detroit, and<br />
Newark. The athletic revolt springs from a disgust and<br />
dissatisfaction with the same racist germ that infected<br />
the warped minds responsible for the bomb murders<br />
of four black girls as they prayed in a Birmingham,<br />
Albama, church and that conceived and carried out the<br />
murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and<br />
Medgar Evers, among a multitude of others. The revolt<br />
of the black athlete arises also from his new awareness<br />
of his responsibilities in an increasingly more desperate,<br />
violent, and unstable America. He is for the first time<br />
reacting in a human and masculine fashion to the disparities<br />
between the heady artificial world of newspaper<br />
clippings, photographers, and screaming spectators<br />
and the real world of degradation, humiliation, and<br />
horror that confronts the overwhelming majority of<br />
Afro-Americans. An even more immediate call to arms<br />
for many black athletes has been their realization that<br />
once their athletic abilities are impaired by age or injury,<br />
only the ghetto beckons and they are doomed once<br />
again to that faceless, hopeless, ignominious existence<br />
they had supposedly forever left behind them. At the<br />
end of their athletic career, black athletes do not become<br />
congressmen, as did Bob Mathias, the white former<br />
Olympic decathlon champion, or Wilmer Mizell,<br />
ex-Pittsburgh Pirate pitcher. Neither does the black athlete<br />
cash in on the thousands of dollars to be had from<br />
endorsements, either during his professional career or<br />
Preface • xxvii