LITTLE ROCK — Histories of the civil rights movement appropriately focus upon such important events as Harry Truman's integration of the armed forces, the Montgomery bus boycott and Brown vs. Board of Education.
But a plausible argument can be made that the most important step of all was taken on April 15, 1947, the day that Jackie Robinson stepped on a major league baseball field wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform.
Robinson's breaking the color barrier represents perhaps the most important contribution to the cause of racial integration in American life because so many Americans care so much more about sports than they do about politics or social issues. Primitive stereotypes of black inferiority are harder to maintain when black athletes consistently prove themselves before white audiences on playing fields where politics doesn't figure into win-loss columns and rules don't recognize skin color.
Because racism is a disease that tends to be contracted early in life, it becomes difficult for kids who grew up worshipping Ernie Banks or Gale Sayers to become racists. From Robinson and Arthur Ashe to Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, great black athletes have been great contributors to the cause of combating racism first, great athletes second.
But at least one prominent sportswriter, Jason Whitlock of the Kansas City Star, believes that some of this progress achieved on the playing fields is about to be undone through the infusion of "hip hop" culture into the National Football League and other sports.
Because Whitlock is black, he can say things that a white journalist can't. And what he said in his column last week on foxsports.com is as blunt as it is true andnecessary. According to Whitlock, "African American football players caught up in the rebellion and buffoonery of hip hop culture have given NFL owners and coaches a reason to whiten their rosters." He believes that "football bojanglers" like Terrell Owens and Chad Johnson are damaging both the image and the opportunities for black athletes.
To support his case, Whitlock points to something that no one else has noticed (or, if noticed, been willing to talk about)-that the rosters of the two best teams in the NFL, the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots, also happen to be the two of the whitest.
Because the values that hip hop represents are so contrary to the values that encourage teamwork and success, he predicts that the percentage of black players in the league will decline dramatically over time. When that happens, for Whitlock, it won't be white racism that is to blame, but the "bojanglers" themselves, along with those in the broader society who refuse to criticize the misbehavior of black athletes for fear of being called racist.
"By failing to confront and annihilate the abhorrent cultural norms we have allowed to grab our youth," he wrote, "we have in the grand American scheme sentenced many of them to hell on earth (incarceration), and in the sports/entertainment world we've left them to define us as buffoonish, selfish and unreliable."
As Whitlock correctly notes, it is culture, not race, that is at work here; moreprecisely, the social pathologies that have come to pervade inner-city black life and are actually given glorified expression by hip hop.
Whatever its aesthetic merits, there can be no doubt that the themes pervading "gangsta" rap are thoroughly misogynist, violent and racist. To the extent that such values and the behavior associated with them have become dominant among black youth, as Whitlock claims, a new set of racial stereotypes will have replaced the old and new obstacles will have been placed in the way of the cause of racial equality.
When Willie Mays and Walter Payton carried themselves on and off the field with class and dignity, they weren't "acting white," and it would be a shame if black authenticity somehow became identified with an ethos that encourages brutality and ignorance.
Thuggish, sleazy behavior should be no more acceptable coming from blacks than from whites, and there is no reason that the standards for behavior for black athletes should be any different from those for white athletes (and no reason thus far to believe that new NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell sees any such differences).
The biggest barrier to racial justice in American society is no longer the racism of white bigots but the deadly combination of hip hop values and the refusal of politically correct white liberals to criticize them. We have made incredible progress since April 15, 1947, but how likely is it that we would have come this far if Jackie Robinson had instead behaved like Michael Vick and Adam "Pacman" Jones?
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Free-lance columnist Bradley R. Gitz teaches politics at Lyon College at Batesville.
Editorial, Pages 107 on 10/28/2007