Whitlock Revises And Extends His Remarks

I disagree with your premise that today's youth can't identify or know the significance of some of the biggest names and events of the Civil Rights Movement, but that was still one hell of a post, Alma.

 

I think it's part of a general hostility toward history, and doesn't reduce the true impact of stuff like Carlos and Smith. And with so much more media nowadays, everything becomes a shiny quarter.

And Alma, you're running out of time to change back to Chinatown, if you wish to.

 

The Good Doctor,

1. I question whether that event was truly significant.

2. I didn't say can't. I said don't.

 

Alma --
Number one, it was a significant event even outside of the context of racial politics because it was one of the first, and certainly one of the most graphic, examples of Olympic athletes standing up to the people who ran the Games. (So, by the way, was the refusal of Czech gymnast Vera Caslavska during that same Olympics to look at the Soviet flag during the awards ceremony two months after the tanks rolled into Prague.) The change in the relationship between Olympic athletes and the Olympic organizers was ongoing, but Smith and Carlos gave it an central focus.
As for its impact as is commonly appreciated, there is an inherent value in an iconic photograph, or in a public stand, simply because it was a public stand. By your criteria, Tiger Woods also has done more than Rosa Parks did by not changing her seat, and I suspect very few youngsters could tell you what THAT was all about. Aski a kid what the Edmund Pettus Bridge is some time. Doesn't make them any less important as historical moments. It just makes this country history-ignorant.

 

Fenian,

I'm not sure, in the scheme of things, that Olympic politics are particularly important. What did the 1980 and 1984 boycotts solve or prove? Twenty-years later Russia has its most amoral leader since Stalin and our president claims to glimpse into his soul.

Czech gymnast is the same thing. We may appreciate it on a personal level, but it has little historical significance.

I suspects most youngsters could tell me what Rosa Parks did, and why it mattered, insomuch as kids can explain the context.

I'm judging Woods as an athlete, not a civil rights icon. As an athlete, he's had far more social and racial impact than Carlos and Smith, and he's done so as the one of the richest athletes in recorded history. Whether you think he's done "enough," well, another question.

 

Anyone that reveals Scoop Jackson for the unintelligent weak columnist that he is gets at least one free pass from me.
Whitlock took Jackson's pants down last month and Jackson had no response, because he had no defense on his bizarre "Black men have a better chance at becoming NBA stars than sportswriters" argument.
Every newspaper I've worked at would bend over backwards to get minorities and women on the sports staff, regardless of experience.
Whitlock went the route most of the rest of us did, college newspaper, small newspaper, up the chain.
What is Jackson's background anyway? He can't have gone by the numbers and written that stupidity. Experience surely would've taught him the truth.

 

get used to it. do you really think scoop's pants were the first pair of men's pants whitlock has taken down?

 

Alma --
Point One -- Olympic politics are certainly important as regards the Olympics themselves, and because these events changed the relationship between the people who organize the Games and the people who compete in them, they are certainly important in that context, which is what I thought we were discussing.
Point Two -- I think I hear the sounds of goalposts moving here. I'm not questioning Tiger Woods's impact, or his charitable giving. I think comparing empirical evidence -- how much money and to whom -- with symbolic significance is sort of a fool's errand. I was around in 1968 and, I assure you, the events in Mexico City has a profound impact. It was just difficult to measure and, yes, it led in its own way to the possibility of a Tiger Woods at all.

 

No. Way. In. Hell.

Tiger Woods has had little impact on black Americans other than maybe a little pride and maybe selling a little more golf equipment and boosting television ratings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe there is one other North American black on the PGA tour or at least in the top 125. And that's OK - Tiger is the best golfer and his determination is to be the best in history. It's what he does, and nobody expected Arnold Palmer to be a leader for a better environment or Jack Nicholas to do something to improve the educational system.

But that fact that people don't know about John Carlos and Tommie Smith doesn't mean in didn't have an impact. That protest could be critiqued on a number of levels, but the fact is that it did have an impact. It meant that there was a demand that blacks would have chances as coaches after their playing careers were done. It showed America and the world that just allowing blacks to use their talents and having no impact on the worlds of coaching and management was not OK. It upset white people at the time, and that was a needed jolt. Moreover, it had an impact on Olympic athletes. The reason track athletes and others have those endorsement contracts today is because of that moment... it showed that Olympic athletes wouldn't have to be completely controlled by the likes of Avery Brundage.

That has made a lot more impact that anything Tiger Woods has done.

 

Alma,
I don't mean to diminish anything Tiger has done, but by your logic, Jackie Robinson and the Texas Western players didn't accomplish much because they didn't donate money.

 

Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters, blustering into dominating country-club sports in the late 20th century has had a much greater impact.

I couldn't believe the number of black fathers and sons I saw at Medinah.