Every Sunday night I go out to my favorite club to engage in
lively conversation and enjoy some adult companionship. In the
summertime, this often includes taking in ESPN’s Sunday Night
Baseball. This Sunday however, the Red Sox-Angels game was
scheduled two hours earlier than the usual 8:00 PM start so that
the network could air its annual ESPY Awards show in prime
time.
Held captive by the dictates of our friendly bartender, my
friends and I were forced to endure the entire two-plus hour event.
I say endure because, as any adult who watches ESPN without the
protection of the mute button knows, the audio assault that issues
forth from the Bristol, CT studios is often unbearable.
I have in times past wondered exactly when the world of sports
became infested with the cacophonous din of rock, rap and other
forms of what are popularly considered to be “music,” but have long
since ceased to care. I have also given up wondering when sports —
which used to be a way to encourage young men away from more
dissolute pursuits — has now embraced all that is debased in our
modern culture; the objectification of women as sex toys, vulgar
language, egotism, and violence.
As was to be suspected, all of this was on full display in the
ESPYs telecast. From the crude, juvenile humor and other lame
attempts at entertainment by host Justin Timberlake and other
current celebrities, to the bevy of babes busting out of their
decolletage, viewers looking for any real sports content were once
again left on the sidelines. All of this proved to be merely an
annoying distraction until the Arthur Ashe Courage Award was
presented to John Carlos and Tommie Smith. That’s when I blew my
top.
FOR THOSE OLD ENOUGH to remember, Smith and Carlos were track stars
who, when they won the gold and bronze medals in the 200 meters at
the 1968 Mexico City Summer Games, lowered their heads and gave the
Black Power, gloved-fist salute during the playing of the Star
Spangled Banner. To hear the sycophants at ESPN tell it, theirs was
a tale of tremendous courage and the epitome of self-sacrifice.
Except that it wasn’t, exactly. Smith and Carlos were founding
members of a group called the Olympic Project for Human Rights,
whose initial aim was to have black athletes boycott the Games in
protest that they were only tools of the American white
establishment, that winning any medals for such a country was only
“a carrot on a stick.” The OPHR’s quasi-socialist manifesto
included the following:
We must no longer allow the sports world to pat itself
on the back as a citadel of racial justice when the racial
injustices of the sports world are infamously legendary…any black
person who allows himself to be used in the above matter is a
traitor because he allows racist whites the luxury of resting
assured that those black people in the ghettos are there because
that is where they want to be. So we ask why should we run in
Mexico only to crawl home?
But Smith and Carlos failed to get any athletes to stay away from
Mexico City and in the end, neither did they. These two
self-proclaimed “traitors” crawled home to an America which had
paid their way to compete at the Olympics and whose uniform they
hypocritically wore in competition, thus giving them the
international platform they so badly sought to air their
grievances. An America where, by way of their outstanding athletic
ability, they received college scholarships, most likely funded by
“racist whites,” at a time when most of their fellow young men were
at risk of being sent overseas to make the ultimate sacrifice for
their country.
While Smith and Carlos did experience a backlash after the
Olympics, it wasn’t all to their detriment. Indeed, Smith felt that he was blessed by the fallout following his
actions in Mexico, in that he had been discharged from the ROTC for
“un-American activities:” “I was going to ‘Nam, I could see myself
in rice paddies. I believe there’s a God. Sixty-eight had its
downfall, but it had its protection for me. I might not be alive.”
Many of his fellow African Americans couldn’t say the same.
In trying to understand the resentment that I and many of my
fellow Americans felt toward Smith and Carlos, you must remember
that at that time, men like Jackie Robinson, Joe Louis and Jesse
Owens were still alive, and so were the people, white and black
alike, who loved and respected them. Yet, the Black Power movement
derided these men and others like them.
It should come as no surprise that, when told that the OPHR had
called him an “Uncle Tom,” Owens — who, at the 1936 Olympics in
Berlin showed just how to defeat true white supremacists —
responded as a true gentleman: “I’m old enough to be their uncle,
but I’m not their Tom. We don’t need this kind of stuff. We should
just let the boys go out and compete.” And it was Jackie Robinson
who said, “Stokely Carmichael’s version of Black Power can
only get us more George Wallaces elected to office.”
Are Smith and Carlos to be commended for speaking out against
what they perceived to be injustice? Yes, but to treat them as
heroes without an acknowledgement of the harm done by members of
the Black Power movement to racial harmony in this country is
intellectually dishonest. Most of these groups intentionally
fomented a climate of racial hatred and cultural separation that
sadly still exists today; even in sports.
