“what do you call an educated negro with a B.A. or an M.A., with a B.S., or a PhD?” The answer? “You call him a nigger, because that is what the white man calls him, a nigger.”- Malcolm X
“However, it is not wrong, in my view, to believe that some races generally excel others in some particular respects. One coach at a midwestern college was fired because he asserted that black athletes are, on the average, better sprinters and jumpers than whites. His superiors claimed that his remarks were racist. In my view that was an injustice. The coach’s views, in this case, were very probably true, and he should have had freedom to express them.”- Reformed theologian John Frame
“But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration”- Thomas Jefferson
“In music [blacks] are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time”- Thomas Jefferson
“[The blacks'] inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life. . . .” -Thomas Jefferon
Jefferson quotes taken from his Notes to Virginia
I am willing to bet that you have heard the argument that Black people are better than white people at sports. Some of you in certain parts of the U.S. have even learned from family members or friends that Blacks are better than whites at sports. Without question, the vast majority of professional athletes in the National Football League and National Basketball Association are of African descent. So logically, wouldn’t it make sense to affirm what we have always believed about the races, that blacks are biologically predestined to be good at somethings, and other races, at other things, oh, like math (Asians), organizing/governing/leading society (whites), or being close to nature (Native Americans)? The idea that African Americans excel at being sensual and entertainers did not die with Thomas Jefferson. When I was in high school, one of my heroes was the late Reverend Reggie White, the football player. Imagine my disappointment, even back then, when I read in his autobiography, In The Trenches, that he believed that through biology and divine predestination that the races were received different gifts. For blacks? You got it, it’s worship and sports. And whites? Running society! This from an African American from Tennessee, too.
Frantz Fanon argued that what sustained colonialism and U.S. American apartheid the idea that the Negro was “the predestined depository” of all things aggressive, emotional, and bodily (Black Skin, White Masks). “The white man wants the world; he wants it for himself alone. He finds himself predestined master of the this world. He enslaves it. (BS, WM)” When people argue that blacks are good at singing and sports, imagine what would happen if someone just replied with a simple question, “And what do you believe white people are good at?” See, the logic behind “black people are fine athletes and singers” is that there has to be a flip side, there has to be a white side to go with the black, right? The racist logic behind biological determinism and Jungian archetypes (see Fanon for his case against Carl Jung too, against the idea that our racial stereotypes are biologically inherited) may seem like people are giving a compliment, when in reality, they are passing on the same racist myths that Thomas Jefferson held. In Fanon’s survey to overall 500 persons, one of the words associated with “Negro” was athlete, which, along with the prevalence of reality tv shows of their wives, is evidence enough to show that the black athletes are still being, in Fanon’s words, “singularly eroticized.”
This tone-deaf non-athletic black intellectual has enough evidence in his own right to prove that not all black persons are gifted in sports or worship. I join Chauncey DeVega in asking “If the best and brightest of Black America are just felons and drug users in the eyes of populist conservatives [I would add mainstream liberals too], what of the legions of working class, hard working, regular folks?” Of course, there are always reminders for Blacks about their place in the world, like the case of Tim Tebow. Someone who I personally root for as an underdog, but no black quarterback will be portrayed as having the odds stacked against him, except for if he went to prison like Michael Vick.
The quarterback is a position of status the QB is, ideally supposed to be the most rational and the person most capable of leading the team on the field. Black quarterbacks from the time they entire college and then are drafted, always hear whispers of position changes (like this year’s Heisman Trophy Winner Robert Griffin III). In other words, the opportunity to be seen as a leader, to grab the national spotlight is always a position coach’s decision away for the black quarterback, since blacks are only supposed to be good at singing and entertaining.
In reality, as long as good well-meaning people remain committed to “the blacks as natural athletes myth,” the odds will always be stacked against racial minorities.
Related articles
- White Skin, Black Masks: Sammy Sosa, Beyonce, Fanon & Beauty (politicaljesus.com)
