Scoops civil response to Whitlock

And you have decided to take your Arrogant Boob pills this morning.
Here's some more.
http://www.tapdance.org/tap/people/bojangle.htm
And you can take the thumb of your pimp hand out of your own ass any time.

 

"Because in this game, only because there are so few of us, it is necessary for us to stand together, have each others' backs, through thick and thin skin, whether we like one another or not."

I hardly, if ever, read Scoop Jackson. But I think he is dead on with this point here. All this mud slinging aside, it's really silly that "we" can't seem to get along. When I first started in this business over 10 years ago, I had no idea of the hidden racism that exists in the journalism world. I was lucky enough to work for one of the few black SEs at the outset of my career, so I didn't have a clear idea of what I was up against. I wish I did, not that I would have taken a different career path. But I would have learned from the beginning just how hard I have to work to sometimes prove to others that I didn't get this job because of the color of my skin, to meet some diversity guidline.

Now, when I go cover a pro event a decade later after starting in this business and look around the press box, I'm the only African-American there. And it's not like I work in some town in the southeast or midwest. It's rather depressing at times when you look at the percentage of minority athletes in pro sports, yet look at the percentage of minority sports reporters who are actually beat writers following a pro team. It's downright sickening.

So with that, can't we all just get along? I mean, this is ridiculous.

 

HERE IS THE (alleged) ARTICLE THAT GOT JASON (GATTED)!

By Scoop Jackson
Page 2

There's a story I tell whenever I go to a high school or college to speak.

I ask everyone to tell me how many black professional basketball players they know. Depending on the size of the room, 90 percent of the time, the students say they can name most of the players in the NBA.

There are roughly 350 players in the League, about 85 percent of them black. We usually round to about 300 -- therefore, the students claim to know for a fact that there are 300 professional basketball players.

Then I ask them to name 300 black sportswriters.

The room always gets eerily quiet. Beyond mortuary.

Michael Wilbon's name comes up, Stephen A.'s, "that black man with the beard who's on 'SportsReporters' a lot" gets mentioned (for the record, William C. Rhoden), and, if they're seriously official with their sports journalist knowledge, Phil Taylor and Ralph Wiley will get nods.

Past that, more silence.

Then I make a point.

"Do you know why you can't name 300 black sportswriters?" I say to them. "Because 300 of us don't exist."

The room becomes less quiet. Mumbling. Private conversations break out.

Then I make the point: "Which means you all have a better chance to make it to the NBA than you do doing what I do for a living."

I wish I wrote well enough to describe the looks on their faces. Every time.

The story I came to tell received some publicity recently. The story is about a research project initiated by the Associated Press Sports Editors and under the direction of Richard Lapchick (who contributes to ESPN.com) of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida. The study looked at how many black sports editors at APSE newspapers there were in America.

 

It was a study that came back with these numbers: four out of 305.

Last week, Norman Chad, syndicated columnist for The Washington Post, wrote a column headlined "I'm in the White Business."

Four out of 305. Enough to make a white journalist turn white.

Or write about.

It's a story that the fewer than 300 black sportswriters have been talking about for years, but it took a white writer to bring it to the masses.

And now that it's out, it must be accompanied by substance. Not that Mr. Chad didn't do the story justice, but this study is about just us, the 1.3 percent and those who live with this number every day, the ones who won't get the opportunity to become editors of the pages of sports.

It's a story we've been screaming forever, but no one wanted to hear. One that we've all thought was one of the biggest in sports, but no one wanted to read.

Four out of 305.

Chad said the number was "like Gilbert Gottfried's hit rate at a singles bar." To us African-American sportswriters and editors, it was more like our reality finally coming to life.

When you live in a place where a "skewed" misrepresentation of the balance is your daily existence, you cope. That's what you learn to do, that's where you have no choice.

The sports experience for black people is different. It is one that hasn't and will never be shared by any other race or nationality in the country.

Much of the civil rights and forces of equality we living black in America have achieved have come from accomplishment in sports. Think about that. Serious.

Jack Johnson, Jesse Owens, the Negro Leagues, Jackie Robinson, Curt Flood, Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe, Jim Brown, Althea Gibson, Wilma Rudolph, the Harlem Globetrotters, Wendell Scott, Willy T. Ribbs, Shani Davis, the Williams sisters, Tiger Woods.

Much of what these people stand for and what they represent has nothing to do with sports. But the role they -- and many unnamed others -- have played in shaping African-American history has been told to us by those who do not share what these "sports figures" mean to us  12 percent of the American population (or higher, if you consider the walls broken down for other minorities to participate in sports).

That is why this report is significant. More significant than if the report had come out about any other business in America. Even though the 1.3 percent top management rate reflects almost any other Fortune 5000 business in America, sports, you see, is different. Along with music and entertainment, it has been one of the only places we've been able to find equality.

To us, sports is not a game ... it represents freedom. Always has, always will. But most of America doesn't understand that. Never has, never will.

But because of the makeup of sports, because of the "skewed" number of us who play, because of its history in connection to our emancipation, the fact that only four of us have been given the opportunity to run the pages in which a major part of our history is being told gives an insight into what we black sportswriters have been saying since Pulitzer became a prize.

 

Do you really think Scoop knows the name of every black sports writer in America? Are you telling me he's got the name of the black kid fresh out of college who is covering prep football in Alabama?

BTW, that APSE study didn't include the SEs at African-American newspapers across the nation.

 

http://garlandglobetrotter.blogspot.com/2006/07/strange-fruit-project-healing.html


(Note 1: Take into consideration that that number is probably the highest it has ever been. Note 2: Take into consideration that that number doesn't include television, radio, magazines or Web sites. Note 3: Take into consideration that the number of positions held by blacks of the 128 media staff members of the 30 NBA last season teams was only 14, the most of the four major sports leagues.)

The rest of this article can be found at the link above. I'm done beating this worthless topic. It's too many other SERIOUS and WONDERFUL things going on. Besides, this issue is DEAD!

 

Not to ally myself even accidentally with the grammarian crash-test dummy up above, but, Inky, I could prove that black people had a fair shake in higher education in 1952 if I counted Grambling and Fisk. Doesn;t mean there wasn't segregation. or the racism that drove it.

 

Oh, I know that. But discounting the AA papers across the nation means you're discounting some wonderful reporters and columnists.

 

Still waiting for you to refute this post, sportsbruh:

How many people are TRYING to become sportswriters? And how many are TRYING to become NBA players?
If you set out to become a sportswriter at age 22, how quickly could you get a job anywhere, at a small paper or whatever? If you set out to become an NBA player, how quickly would you hook on with an NBA team?

 

True enough.

 

yeah, but if you said those people weren't getting a college education because they went to grambling and fisk, you'd be doing a great disservice telling african-americans they couldn't get a college education because it's 'only grambling and fisk'

 

I love Whitlock's stuff, but for the first time I am impressed by Scoop.

It makes you wonder -- Does Scoop gotta put on that certain "bojangles" schitick to get noticed? He has to write like a hoodlum to get a job at ESPN?

It is Scoop's urban style that got him noticed. Now, we all know Scoop can write, evidenced by the column.

By killing Whitlock in the column, Scoop actually proves Whitlock right.

Interesting.

Why must all black people be able to dance and play sports?

Scoop's writing re-inforces this urban hip-hop. I think that is why Whitlock is upset. Anbd rightfully so.

Scoop doesn't need to write like that.