Appendix - Matrix - Michigan State University

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