There Was No Golden Age of Sport for African American Athletes

EarlSmith

. Harry Edwards, the Berkeley sociologist is long-time credible source on issues related

to African American athletes. Yet he errs on the issue of a "Golden Age" in sports for African Ameri- can athletes. This belief is more fiction than real and as formulated in Edwards' article, it never re- ally existed. Sport scholars and others have been writing about the "Golden Age" for years but it is important to note here that it never existed for Afri- can American athletes--not at the turn of the cen- tury when African American jockeys were in high demand and winning horse races, and not in the 1930s and 1940s when all-white football and bas- ketball teams were astutely aware of their African American counterparts, but chose to ignore these athletes and their talents. Nor were these athletes recognized as equals at the zenith of African Ameri- can sport talent showcase of the 1960s and 1970s, a celebratory time when these athletes proved to America and the world that given the chance they would excel. Technically speaking, the years be- tween 1919 and 1930 have been called the "golden age of sports." Wilbert Leonard attributes three so- cial factors as being responsible for this. These are: affluence; increased availability and use of the au- tomobile; and the boom in the newspaper industry. Below I will demonstrate the essence of my thesis.

The truth of the matter is this: Edwards' views in "Golden Age of Blacks Sports Participation" are similar to what he has written in the past ten years. That is: sports taken as an "all in one basket" pur- suit within the African American community is det- rimental to both African American youth and their

families. This single-minded pursuit, he argues, leads to many social problems for these youth and their families. He thus avoids the problems that many in organized sports have had to address, that is, the unfulfilled promise of riches, glory and fame requires a larger social-economic and political perspective. Such a perspective is eloquently described, for ex- ample, by the Harvard sociologist William J. Wil- son as the pursuance of better "life chances."

The repeated story line put forth by Professor Edwards becomes somewhat redundant and factu- ally inaccurate the closer we get to the present. I will not address here the issue of Edwards' profes- sional relationship with revenue producing sports. Edwards chastises American society, the African American athletes and their families who chase the dreams of being like "O.J., Dr., J or M. J." as a chief problematic within African American com- munities, and especia l ly among young African American males. The fulfillment of the dream he believes, along with many other sport scholars, has proven to be exceptionally elusive. Granted that the athletic arena is no panacea for any athlete let alone African American athletes, there is more to it than this. The institution of sport changed consid- erably since 1955. The nearly fifty years of change at all levels of sport have remade the institution of sport in America. It is now a new arena for study and analysis, awaiting scholars to get more involved.

There are more leagues at all levels and thus more opportunities to participate. There are even international sport leagues that recruit American players, bringing into view the globalization of

46 / SOCIETY �9 M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 0 0

sports. There are more teams. The equipment used in games has improved and in addition to highly scientific training methods, the players are bigger, stronger, faster, and they endure longer (with fewer career-threatening injuries). For example, Michael Johnson, the African American long-sprinter is at the top of the charts for the 400-meter dash and at the age of thirty-one he has set a new world record (August 26, 1999 in Seville, Spain at the World Champion- ships) for the event at 43.18 seconds (taking . 11 sec- onds off the old record). "Superman" as he is known, is still "champ" in an event long considered the event that ends an a th le te ' s career before an athlete reaches the "old-age" of twenty-five. The players are smarter, thus assuring less outright exploitation of the sort that saw Kareem Abdul Jabaar (a.k.a. Lew Alcindor) lose all of his accumulated assets to un- scrupulous, money grabbing managers and agents.

The players are smarter, thus assuring less outright exploitation of the sort that

saw Kareem Abdul Jabaar (a.k.a. Lew Alcindor) lose all of his accumulated

assets to unscrupulous, money grabbing managers and agents.

The major change, though, is that more and more African American athletes have access to the oppor- tunity structure available within the institution of sports in America at an early age. That is to say, more of these athletes (a) play in the organized "little leagues" within integrated settings; (b) more play on teams in their high school and (c) they enter college through the athletic door and have access towards earning respectable livings in the profes- sional ranks of their respective sports. The Will- iams' sisters in tennis, Tiger Woods in golf, Michael Jordan in basketball are but a few examples that illustrate my point. We would not be writing about these individuals and their accomplishments if it were 1965.

By ignoring the U,S. military (for the most part, the Army) means missing the one institution that has produced some of the greatest upward mobil- ity for African Americans. Why sport scientists fail to recognize this (more so than sport journalists) is a mystery to me, especially at the close of the 20th century. This is where Edwards' work needs to be criticized. It makes good sense to be critical of the

institution of sport. This is especially true of the systematic discrimination supported by the major team sports (e.g., baseball and football) which con- tinue to fail to accept fully African American ath- letes as equals. A glaring and poignant example here is, of course, the professional Negro League players--and their aspirations to be major league players in three team sports (that of baseball, bas- ketball and football)--prior to the Second World War. For so long, the aspirations of these players went unfulfilled.

To be sure, when high school "man-children" can detour around college and land multi-million dollar contracts in the National Basketball Asso- ciation (NBA), sport scientists need to stand up, listen and learn that the old forms of racial exclu- sion are no longer valid and, therefore, their analy- ses are in need of serious updating and change. Likewise, when the Hewlett-Packard corporation announces to the world that a 44-year-old woman has been named chief executive officer and that the executive committee of the board is now pre- dominantly women, the substance of gender re- search has, for sure, changed. That means, old "glass-ceiling" research must be updated to account for some inclusion, but it does not mean that the path-breaking research that first alerted us to the glass ceiling is irrelevant. It just means the work needs to be updated.

This sense of change, and the need for change is what struck me when I read the Edwards' essay on the "Golden Age of Sports." The author missed the opportunity to bring to light the main contra- dictions between the "one step forward and two steps back" that have plagued African American athletes since before 1900. All is not well with the article. The contribution has a good start, flows as it should, but stagnates about mid-way and fails to come back to us as an empirical research project that extends beyond repeated thoughts and an up- dated source citation here and there.

Why this noted scholar did not forge ahead, con- tinuing to plow the new ground is another mystery to me: for example, why did Edwards not lay out his own new perspectives, theories and methods of research on what is needed to take sport and race research into the next century? Why, for ex- ample, are we not treated to the real inside stuff to which the author alludes but on which he never delivers?

Yet, there remains one constant, and this is what keeps this arena open for sociological scholarship.

THERE WAS NO GOLDEN AGE OF SPORT FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN ATHLETES / 47

The overwhelming majority of African American athletes remain underrepresented in coaching, man- agement and higher athletic administration. Recent events support this assertion. The 10th edition of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society's Ra- cial and Gender Report Card makes it plain that off the playing field, African American athletes are still being ignored for coaching and manage- ment positions. His assessment nevertheless fails to fully capture the extent to which this is true. In a critique of the phenomenon of "unconscious rac ism" in sports, Professor Tim Davis of the Wake Forest Univers i ty School of Law writes: "In a s tudy of 1997 h i r ing pa t te rns of head coaches in the National Football League [it was learned] that for 11 head -coach ing vacanc ies only one of the 95 Afr ican-Amer ican assistant coaches was included in the interview process." This, we remind ourselves, occurred in a profes- sional league that boasts an incredible high 65 percent of its players as African American. Add to this the amazingly long practice of "stacking" African American athletes away from the argu- ably central or "thinking" positions in team sports like baseball (pitcher) and football (quarterback) and you have a scenario whereby African Ameri- can athletes have made some progress but not total progress in sports.

The major issues raised by Edwards make it im- portant to note that a meritocracy in playing time and employment in all of sports does not exist at the same level of magni tude that s imilar meritocracies exist within the larger economy and society. Almost all of sport has a better record. Competition, cohesion, jealousies, high levels of incivility all work against the synergistic teamwork that is supposed to exist in an almost pristine form in American sports. It does not.

Another development in contemporary Ameri- can sports that has not eluded the modern day Af- rican American athlete, as it did in previous years-- at least at the professional l eve l - - i s that these athletes have access to major product endorsements. Many of these athletes are cashing in on the explo- sion of popularity for athletics in American soci- ety, and much of the access to these riches are con- t rol led by moguls who oversee the sport and enter ta inment business including the broadcast media. Michael Jordan in basketball and the Will- iams sisters in tennis are a few examples of the way African American athletes have "'come of age" and understand the opportunities, their roles and place

in this high profile sport corporate culture. And to round out the discussion add Tiger woods (golf). "Tigermania" took hold after Woods' victory at the Masters in 1997 and has not let up since. The big- gest endorsement deal in all of sport is Woods' con- tract with Nike said to be in the neighborhood of $90 million for five years.

Because he is still using the analysis that pro- pelled him to the top of the sport sociology research pyramid as a critical analyst and spokesman for African American athletes, Professor Edwards" work is mostly journalistic and therefore less ef- fective. This work only goes so far in understand- ing the new African American athlete. These ath- letes have to compete (on and off the playing fields) in a business far different than in the days when big Jim Brown was running over linebackers for the Cleveland Browns, or when Althea Gibson was breaking well established concrete barriers in two "country club" sports of golf and tennis.

At another level, and because of the Mexico City demons t ra t ions by Afr ican Amer ican athletes (largely organized by Professor Edwards ) - - and because of a growing obsession in American soci- ety making sports popular--there exists life after the Olympic Games. Names that come to mind are Frank Shorter , the late super - runner Steve Prefontaine and Rarer Johnson. The range of eco- nomic opportunities within legitimate socio-eco- nomic structures were not available for amateur athletes in general and definitely not for amateur African American athletes once they finished their last game or event. After 1972, many more of these athletes did not have to hold full-time jobs before they could concentrate on training for their high level of elite events and games. With the transition from money-less amateurs to fat-cat athletes, I like to remember something that Bill ("Boston Billy") Rodgers said many years ago. At the height of his running prowess (winning quite a number of the grueling marathon distance run and especially the legendary Boston Marathon four times straight and the New York marathon four times), he could state: "no runner who works 40 hours a week will beat me." This aphorism captures much that has hap- pened in athletics.

Finally, there is the decimation of the amateur athlete; a breed of athlete who went to a local field, track, or gym after work to train. He/she no longer exists! With the big money in all of sports, includ- ing intercollegiate athletics, African American ath- letes have much better life chances within and

48 / SOCIETY �9 MARCH/APRIL2000

out of sports than ever in the history of such con- tests. Why do they not take advantage of these new, lucrative opportuni t ies? This remains the quintessential question and the old critique pre- sented by Edwards is not equipped to address such contemporary, critical, and burning issues. While once valuable and one of the first voices of insight and dissent available from the academic sport so- ciology community, that critique has lost its po- tency.

In fact, for some time now I have believed that Edwards ' latest foray into this arena, that is, his critique of African American athletes, is closer to that of John Hoberman than the communi ty of scholars--African American and whi te - -who un- derstand the changing nature of social relationships, and the growing importance of sports in American culture. These scholars also know how important carefully produced empirical research is for under- standing and clarifying the social, political, and economic complexities of life chances for African American athletes.

SUGGESTED FURTHER READINGS

Davis, Timothy. "Racism in Athletics: Subtle Yet Persistent." UniversiO~ of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 881-900, 1999.

Hoberman, John Milton. Darwin's Athletes: How Sport Has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.

Lapchick, Richard E. 1998 Racial and Gender Report Card. Center for the Study of Sport in Society, Northeastern University. Boston: Massachusetts, 1999.

Shropshire, Kenneth L. In Black and White: Race and Sports in America. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

_ _ and Earl Smith. "The Tarzan Syndrome: John Hoberman and His Quarrels with African American Athletes & Intellectuals." Review essay of John Hoberman, Darwin's Athletes, appearing in the Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 22:103-112, 1997.

Smith, Earl. "Race Matters in the National Basketball Association." Marquette Sports Law Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2., 1999.

Earl Smith is Dr, Ernest Rubin Professor of American Eth- nic Studies and chairman of the Department of Sociology at Wake Forest University.

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