Blacks in Basketball & Football

          Well, a few days ago I stuck my foot (my nose?) in the prostitution pool, so now I may as well take a dunk in other controversial waters even though this might be considered more situational than controversial—the present status of Blacks in America (Should it or shouldn’t it be capitalized?). Even that racial term gives me pause and I really dislike the label “African Americans,” since almost none of the blacks now here are from Africa. Granted, many of them are descendants of African slaves from that despicable time in our nation’s past, but most are an amalgamation of other races with widely diverse shades of skin color other than black. So, again, I suggest that “colored” may be the most accurate term even though that leads me back to the other question: Aren’t we all, then, colored? Or, best of all, aren’t nearly all of us American Americans? Asians, Indians (both from India as well as native to this country), Muslims, Europeans, Africaners, Hispanics all stirred in that metaphoric pot, all melded into various hues?

          All right, now for my plunge in the pool. First, I’m in no way a racist, in no way a white supremacist. I recognize how far we’ve come since 1965 and the Civil Rights legislation and how far we have yet to go. I’ve lived long enough to remember when there was no one but whites in films or later on television. All television commercials were restricted to whites. In the music industry, blacks were prominent in Dixieland jazz with someone like Louis Armstrong, in big-band jazz with leaders like Duke Ellington and Count Basie, in jazz vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald and pop artists like Nat King Cole, but most other stars in the musical genres were white as snow.

As recently as 1967, there were still state miscegenation laws banning interracial marriage or even cohabitation. Affirmative action regarding college admissions and scholarships attempted to set a more equitable standard for admittance based on racial proportions. The same became practice in the work place. There are many examples of our attempts to make our lives more equitable regardless of our race. The Academy Awards have tried to become more balanced by expanding the voting membership to include a proportionate number of blacks. Every year more and more films and television shows are based on the black experience. Every year brings us more black actors and directors and writers. Every year America gets closer to racial equality.

Now, that elephant in the room. Should the black community still deplore the inequalities while at the same time extolling (and, yes, in some ways exploiting) their uniqueness. Whatever happened to Paul McCartney and the wonderful Stevie Wonder’s “Ebony and Ivory,” a song that so powerfully attempted to bring us together. Should a black magazine called Ebony be exclusively black without offending any whites? What if today (and, yes, I realize many magazines in the past were exclusively white) a publisher tried to put out a magazine called Ivory that was exclusively white? Would blacks be offended? Should we still have an annual contest to pick a Black Miss America that excludes all women but blacks? What if tomorrow (and, yes, I realize there was a time when exactly this happened) there was an annual contest to pick a White Miss America that excludes all women but whites? In both cases, both races would be and should be offended.

          And now . . . wait for it . . . wait for that other shoe to drop . . . or the other elephant to show up . . .

For at least the last decade or maybe longer, two sports on all levels have become nearly exclusively black—high school about half, college almost three-quarters, professional about ninety percent. I’m talking about basketball and football. I now think of the NBA more as the BBA and the NFL more as the BFL. I’m not complaining, merely observing, and wondering how these stats came to be. The 68 teams in the current March Madness madness made it even clearer. Almost every team’s starting lineup was black, with only two or three whites on the bench. It wasn’t at all uncommon to see all blacks on the floor for part of or for the entire game. The same is even truer in the NBA with nearly every star being black. Then there’s college football and the NFL. There also, the ratio of blacks to whites may not be quite as high as for basketball, but is certainly close, like 80% black. It was once, unfairly, said that there’d never be a black quarterback because blacks weren’t smart enough to play that position. That label has, thank god, been put to rest. And though there are still quite a few white quarterbacks, they account for only about half. Most of the white players are on the offensive line, especially as centers.

Why are there so many blacks playing at all levels in these two sports? Is it because blacks really can jump higher, run faster, dribble better, shoot, throw, catch, tackle, rebound, and dunk better? Or is it motivation and expectation? The greater the possibility of success in these sports, the greater the motivation, and the more one believes the hype and sees the success rate of black athletes in basketball and football, the greater the expectation.

But where is the equity of opportunity? Should whites be given positions in all walks of life in an equitable ratio, like three whites for every one black to reflect the ratio of blacks to whites in the general population? Certainly not. But shouldn’t we all be hoping we can and will soon reach a place where we no longer need to ration out places in our society based on race and instead base them on skill and ability? Let’s just forget color and look only at individual skills and abilities for athletes and employees. That will be the time when we truly achieve equality in America.