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Thursday, June 24, 2010

Challenging a national sports columnist ends with me being called an idiot

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.

2 comments:

  1. You are absolutely correct. He didn't just happen to pick on white guys who may have been overrated. He was making a point. There are plenty of black players who are overrated too but none of those names came up. He and others have a built-in bias that white players can't be as good as black players. White basketball players (particularly Americans) have more to overcome on the court than black players or Europeans.

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  2. This story - http://www.wralsportsfan.com/voices/blogpost/7854421 - is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. The headline reads, "Scheyer and Zoubek among best players not drafted."
    Hum, I wonder why that would be? What do the two of them have in common besides playing for Duke - national champions I might add? Oh yeah, they are both white.
    ESPN's Chad Ford said he was very surprised that Scheyer went undrafted "considering some of the names that went ahead of him." All those names at his position belonged to black players.
    Ford said, "You saw over and over again big guys who didn't produce anything in college being drafted in the second round with teams basically throwing hail marys saying 'maybe we'll get lucky' and guys like Jon Scheyer have four years, very productive. You think he could fit on a team and he goes undrafted."
    Fact or not, the writer of the article, Tim Hall, falls into the same stereotypes I mentioned in this blog entry. In writing about others drafted before Zoubek, he espouses "All three of those guys have Zoubs beat in the athletic ability department. But some team will get a great look at a heck of an offensive rebounder, and a guy with a great work ethic."
    There you go again, not much of an athlete but he works hard.
    I wonder if a sports writer would say about a black quarterback, "Those other guys have him beat in the smarts department, but some team will get a heck of an athlete."
    Scheyer's athleticism also came under question. His agent, Mark Bartelstein, says it's a bogus criticism.
    "At Duke, he played the toughest schedule in the country and he did great against all of these same players in the draft he is being judged against," Bartelstein told the Chicago Sun-Times. "There's no doubt in my mind he'll be in the NBA."
    If we really want to have a frank discussion about race in this country, we need to realize that bias against white players in basketball and football is rampant today.
    They are given less of a chance to make a team and, if they do, they are paid less (as evidenced by draft order).
    If what Parrish said was true, that good white players are hot commodities because they are rare (and presumably because white fans could identify with them), then Scheyer would have at least gone in the first 50 or 60 picks.

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