The word “racism” has been tossed around the past few years like
so many used hankies. In nearly all spheres of American life —
from politics, to the military and the world of sports — the term
is used to excuse and condone a multitude of sins. Sometimes
warranted, often not, charges of racism against minorities are
almost as common today as were actual instances of it decades
ago.
The abomination of slavery — the involuntary servitude of one
people to another — has been practiced around the world for
centuries and continues up to this day. Its practice in this
country is an issue of some complexity, but it is no doubt a part
of our history, in that it is most definitely in the past. It was
abolished with the blood and sacrifice of millions of Americans,
black and white.
Slavery’s stepchild, the odious Jim Crow era has also passed
into history, likewise as the result of the courage and sacrifice
of many Americans, black and white. The abolition of these
atrocities did not end racism, nor were they intended to do so.
Hatred and love are products of the heart and cannot be legislated
by governments; Orwellian hate-crime laws aside.
Guilt is a powerful emotion. And like all emotions, it clouds
reason thus leading to irrational behavior. Some Americans,
rightfully repudiating our past shameful treatment of blacks, have
bent over backwards in an effort to balance the scales of justice,
but in doing so, they’ve managed to tip them the other way. Though
they may have been useful at one time, racial quotas and
affirmative action are in themselves racist.
But, despite the machinations of some, guilt also does not last
forever, especially when nearly all those who perpetrated the
original transgressions responsible for it are long gone. Talk of
reparations for slavery are thankfully fading away as more and more
blacks enter the middle and upper classes of American society
through the sweat of their brow and their strength of
character.
Yet some prefer to float through life on a raft of perpetual
resentment, sometimes parlaying the ride into a political career.
The campaign of some liberal Democrats to continue to fan the
flames of racial tension has created its own cottage industry; a
culture of racial victimization.
The result is that new phenomenon known as reverse racism — as
if “real” racism only flows in one direction. The purveyors of this
type of racism have returned the practice to its original meaning;
not merely one of dislike or distrust between races, but the belief
that one is superior to the other.
The recent comments of Bryant Gumbel, lately of the liberal
Early Show and now working for HBO, are a case in point.
Gumbel said, “[T]ry not to laugh when someone says these are the
world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes
the Winter Games look like a GOP convention.”
Had Mr. Gumbel bothered to check, he might have discovered that,
according to the San Francisco Chronicle, “In Turin, 18
athletes of color are competing on the 211-member American squad.”
That sounds like about 9 percent of the team is non-white, nearly
double the number on the 2002 team and not bad considering that so
few blacks choose to compete in winter sports.
But the gist of his remarks suggests that he believes that the
lack of black athletes debases the quality of the competition;
essentially, that blacks are better athletes than whites. This
loathsome contention is also apparently shared by baseballer Barry
Bonds and others who promote the noxious theory that pre-Jackie
Robinson Hall of Famers didn’t deserve their status because they
never played against blacks.
If true, then we must also say the same of all American players,
black and white, who never played against the huge influx (28 percent) of foreign-born players such as
Asians, Cubans and other Latin Americans who now make up the
rosters of Major League Baseball. You might as well include players
from anywhere in the world or from other planets to make any sense
of this charge.
A 2003 Sports Illustrated article which states that
only 10.5 percent of MLB players are American-born blacks asks, “Where have all the black ballplayers
gone?” They of course gratuitously toss in the canard of “perceived
racism” but also cite “the faster paths to the glory promised by
basketball and football.”
One might also include the paths to the glories of
entrepreneurship, the arts, the sciences, academia, corporate
management, or even the GOP convention.
