ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 25, 1997 TAG: 9703250057
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: WILLIAM RASPBERRY
SOURCE: WILLIAM RASPBERRY
HERE'S something I'll bet you didn't know: The athletic success of black superstars is hurting black America.
I didn't know it either, but it must be so. Not only does the March 24 cover story of U.S. News & World Report say so; I've just seen an entire book devoted to the thesis. Now all I need is for someone to explain it to me.
The two authors do try. John Simons, who wrote the U.S. News piece, notes that African Americans - 13 percent of the population - comprise 80 percent of the slots in the National Basketball Association and 67 percent of the positions in the National Football League. But since the odds are against any particular young athlete ever earning the big money paid to the likes of Michael or Shaquille or Emmitt or Deion, young people who dream of athletic stardom are deluding themselves.
Worse, the time they spend on sports is time not spent on other more achievable goals. And all of it is compounded by the fact that the nonathletic rest of us pay such obeisance to the superathletes that it keeps tempting new generations of youngsters into putting all their eggs into the basket of professional sports.
Simons' piece is headlined ``Improbable Dreams: African Americans are a dominant presence in professional sports. Do blacks suffer as a result?''
John Hoberman is more direct in his book, ``Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race.''
``This sports fixation,'' says Hoberman, a professor of Germanic languages at the University of Texas, Austin, ``damages black children by discouraging academic achievement in favor of physical self-expression, which is widely considered a racial trait.''
There are several problems with that line of reasoning, among them the assumption that if black children didn't chase dreams of athletic glory, they would turn their time and attention to academics. More likely, the reverse is the case. If young athletes know anything at all it is that they have to pull up their academic socks in order to get into college sports in the first place and keep them up in order to maintain athletic eligibility.
The major flaw in both the book and the cover story is the fallacy of the false comparison. The authors, both directly and implicitly, compare the academic performance of college athletes with that of nonathletes. A more realistic comparison might be between the athletes and nonathletes among the academically indifferent.
Another false assumption the authors seem to share is that the reason black youngsters work so hard at their game is that they all expect to become sports millionaires. Many - no doubt too many - do harbor unrealistic expectations. But I promise you that the senior who is a third-string forward on a middle-of-the-road collegiate basketball team is not playing and practicing hard because he expects to be drafted by the NBA. More likely, he simply loves the game. Indeed, for him the game may be the one redeeming element in an otherwise difficult collegiate experience.
Would he be better off spending more time in the books and less in the gym? Quite likely. My problem is with the position shared by Hoberman and Simons that the success of black superstars is bad for black America, not only because it distracts young athletes from their academics but also because it distracts the rest of us from presumably more legitimate achievers.
Isn't it interesting that the people who worry about athletic overemphasis on the part of young black boys never utter a peep about the young figure skaters and tennis players and gymnasts who not only miss much of the ordinary school experience but may actually leave home to be near the right coach or the right climate for their sport?
Why is it OK for these gifted, (mostly) white youngsters to distort their lives in hope of a few moments of Olympic glory but not OK for black kids to pursue athletic dreams worth millions?
Hoberman's answer: Too much athletic success on the part of African Americans may feed the notion that they are naturally superior athletically - leaving open the notion that they are naturally inferior academically.
It's one thing to help our children see that they can, if they work at it, achieve important success in all sorts of endeavors. It's quite another to suggest that they should give up the success they already have. Whose interest would that serve?
- WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP
LENGTH: Medium: 80 linesby CNB