I objected to a recent column by CBSsports.com senior writer Gary Parrish, who also hosts an ESPN radio program. He “bravely” denigrated the basketball talents of a pair of former Duke players – Taylor King and Greg Paulus, both white. He wrote that he always felt they were overrated and not as good as a number of other players he noted, all black.
He wrote, “What I hope is that it teaches the folks handing out cherished things like invitations to the McDonald's All-American game to take their jobs more seriously. Bestowing that kind of honor on an obviously inferior talent doesn't do anybody any favors. It's almost certainly going to make the committee look stupid in due time, and in the meantime it'll add expectations and eyeballs to a prospect whose more likely to be just another guy than the guy at a high-major university.”
It all came across to me as just another liberal white sports writer, who either has an inferiority complex because he couldn’t make it in sports or who has white-guilt syndrome. But I was willing to find out by emailing him.
I wrote, “The two overrated players you point out both just happen to be white, right? Stereotypes work all kinds of ways, don't they?” He responded quite frankly by writing, “Are you asking whether I believe the reputations of Paulus and King were elevated because they're white? Yes, I think there's something to that.”
I wrote back that as a former sports writer (and current blogger I guess), I have found that white basketball players have more prejudices to go through than black players. So, the opposite would be true. White players have to work harder to prove themselves.
I remember people thinking Larry Bird was only good because he worked hard, as if black players don’t work hard. I remember a white high school basketball player who sat on the bench, even though when he saw rare playing time he drilled shots. I remember talking to a scout who told me that white football players are adversely affected by stereotypes. White players that should be at the major college level are relegated to smaller schools and that white players who should go in the first round of the NFL draft drop to the third, fourth or fifth round.
Parrish wrote that I was just plain wrong that white players have to work harder to prove themselves. He wrote, “No way Taylor King (or the Wear Twins, for that matter) are McDonald's All-Americans if they're not white. A good white player is a rarity. Which makes him a commodity. Which leads to accolades he might not deserve.”
I wrote back, “Why is a ‘good’ white player a rarity? Could you also say that a good black student is a rarity? Could you get away with that? You have stepped right into a stereotype of your own - the liberal white-guilt media which has no problem finding and pointing out the limitations of white people but seem to find no limitations of black people. It doesn't take courage to talk about white basketball players being overrated. Let's see a story about black baseball players or hockey players being overrated and see what kind of mail you get. That would be courage.”
Of course those provocative comments earned me the Parrish label of “idiot” and the correspondence was over.
Prior to last basketball season, when questions abound about the future of Duke basketball, Bomani Jones, who is being called “sports radio’s rising star” right now and who happens to be black, said that Duke basketball was failing because all you have to do is look down the bench and see all the white faces. I wonder if a white radio host could get away with saying that NC Central baseball is failing because, well, all you have to do is look down the bench and see all the black faces?
If Parrish’s thoughts (and Jones’) are still universal in the sports world, I guess Duke’s basketball title last year had no effect on the stereotypes.
The spectacular start to Randy Woodson’s tenure as chancellor continued Friday when the Wolfpack named Debbie Yow its new athletics director.
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