You know, when I watched Bryant Gumbel launch this tirade, on Real Sports earlier this week, I was momentarily angry, and then shrugged it off:
I figure that when Thomas Paine said that
February 16th, 2006
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I’m torn between laughter and anger, really, when it comes to how to respond to this.
Gumbel’s tirade amuses me more than anything. At least in the United States, no one is stopping aspiring blacks from taking up skis instead of basketball sneakers or a football. So why he comes off as though this is some kind of right-wing, Caucasian conspiracy to keep blacks out of becoming Winter Olympic contenders amazes me.
As for Reihan Salam’s editorial? I don’t even know what his point is. He jumps from mentioning the minority of non-Caucasians in the Winter Olympics to criticizing the government of India for not funding their olympian hopefuls. And to be frank, that sounds less like a “white man keeping you down” issue and more like a “Your government doesn’t give a damn” issue. If I was him, I’d be focusing on how to get the Indian government to take the Winter Olympics more seriously if they send people to it, instead of sending their athletes up Shit Creek without a paddle.
To me, this all sounds like some big, tin-foil hat conspiracy. What are people supposed to do, force non-Caucasians to play a sport that takes place in the Winter Olympics? Would that make people happy?
It’s nice of Gumbel not to point out the minorities that are representing their countries. Scott Gomez. Toby Dawson. Jarome Iginla. Lascelles Brown. that’s four off the top of my head, and while it’s only four athletes out of several hundred for the USA and Canada, it’s four that Gumbel didn’t mention.
While I don’t doubt that racism is still around in organized sports you have to question how much of the issue is racism and how much is lack of interest within a given ethnic community.