It fell to Dr. Edwards to lead the fight against Martin Kane, and he did so in a series of beautifully reasoned articles reminiscent of the nineteenth century when the world’s top scientists were arguing in measured prose the strengths and defects of Darwinism. I recommend Edwards’ argumentation most warmly, but in doing so I am not presuming to pass judgment on its conclusions. I am commending only the rigorousness of his approach; indeed, I think that both Edwards and Kane have served us well in bringing this inflated topic down to the level of reasonable debate.
I have read three different versions of Edwards’ thesis; the best appears in his book Sociology of Sport, but a good summary appears also in Psychology Today (November 1973). Edwards breaks Kane’s arguments into three broad categories, which he proceeds to rebut.
Do blacks have athletic superiority because of race-linked physical characteristics? Edwards denies this totally. He argues that no researcher cited by Kane studied a random sample of the black population and that to extrapolate from the small samples studied is unacceptable. He also doubts the existence of a clearly defined race, white or black. He finds many more differences between black athletes than between black versus white, and asks the rhetorical question, ‘What physical characteristics does Wilt Chamberlain have in common with Al Attles?’ He is scornful of Kane’s attempt to rationalize discrepancies in this theory by pointing out that ‘the Kenyan Keino and the Ethiopian Bikila have black skin but many white features.’ He questions the theory that blacks living in equatorial regions developed long limbs in order to dissipate heat by citing the fact that pygmies, without elongated limbs, live in close proximity to the spidery Watusi, and prosper. He concluded with a strong paragraph which reminds the reader that simply because a difference is ascertainable it is not necessarily causative.
Is black athletic superiority caused by race-linked psychological factors? Edwards argues that ‘racial character’ was disposed of by scholars decades ago. He questions the scholarly competence of a bunch of coaches to decide that black athletes are happy-go-lucky. He cited recent studies by Thomas Tutko and Bruce Ogilvie to the effect that when it really matters, black athletes, because of the pressures on them, are less happy-go-lucky than whites. He concludes with the observation that if the black athlete has any psychological advantage it is because the white athlete has psyched himself to think so. ‘The “white race” thus becomes the chief victim of its own myth.’
Did racially specific historical occurences create a superior black athletic ability? Edwards seeks to rebut the slave arguments of Calvin Hill and Lee Evans by pointing out that so far as the history of slavery is known, the slaves who survived best were not the hulking brutes but the shrewd ones. He is on stronger ground when he argues that the black race can hardly be pure, considering the amount of miscegenation that took place. And he is strongest when he points out that it required more than physical superiority for a Bill Russell or a Gayle Sayers to excel.
Edwards then proceeds to a discussion of the dangers of the Kane theory. He says that if blacks are superior only because of a racial physical endowment, it is not illogical to reserve the thinking positions in football for the whites, since they may be presumed to have excelled for intellectual as well as physical reasons. An inevitable consequence of the theory would be that if blacks are physically superior, then they must be intellectually inferior. ‘So, if in the affirmation of black identity Afro-Americans should accept the myth of racially innate black physical superiority in any realm, they could be inadvertently recognizing and accepting an ideology which has been used in part as justification for black slavery, segregation and general oppression. For, in the final analysis, the argument of black physical superiority over whites is a potentially racist ideology.’
I have spent many years of my life contemplating this problem of racial differences as I worked in the world’s major xenophobic countries: South Africa, Australia, the Arab lands, Israel, Japan, Spain and the United States. I have listened patiently to arguments on racial superiorities and inferiorities, but nothing I have encountered has had a more profound impact on my thinking than an ingenious study conducted at Harvard many years ago. A budding sociologist simply checked on what men had appeared in Boston prize fights over a hundred-year period. At first all the fighters bore sturdy English names, for the ring was the traditional avenue of escalation for underprivileged English workmen without an education. But after the English became well established, and any workman could find a good paying job, the fighters all became Irish. It was Kid this and Kid that. But now the theory broke down, for when the Irish gained a social and economic foothold they should have exited from the ring, but they did not. The Irish names still continued, until the researcher looked a little more deeply into the matter and found that the new cycle of Irish fighters were really European Jewish immigrants, who had adopted Irish names to profit from their popularity in the preceding cycle. In real life Battling Johnny Kilrain the Second was apt to be Hyman Finkel.
After some time Jewish fighters were free to fight under their real names, and for some years they dominated the Boston rings, but one should not be surprised to find that they quickly established themselves in the community and no longer had need of pugilism as their escape route. Next came the French immigrants, and at long last the black fighters.
With a little practice, one could look at the Boston newspapers of any given era, and by seeing who was fighting whom, determine where the various immigrant groups were on the social ladder. Men fought in the Boston rings not because they wanted to, but because that was the only way out. And to a large extent that truism still governs sports.
I remember the bitterness with which one professional-football scout told me, ‘So help me God, I’ll never again draft a football player from Stanford. You scout ’em, talk with ’em, keep records on ’em, and remind yourself that John Brodie and Jim Plunkett graduated from Stanford and made it big. You advise your team to draft ’em high. But after you waste a high draft choice on ’em, the Stanford kid suddenly realizes that he’d be a damned fool to waste a bunch of years playing professional football when he can move right into a good firm or profession. We’ve drafted three, and we didn’t get a damned one of ’em. From now on, it’s Grambling for me. Those guys need the money. They’ll report.’
Jesse Owens may have summed it up accurately when he said, ‘There is no difference between the races. If the black athlete has been better than his white counterpart, it’s because he’s hungrier—he wants it more.’
My thinking on such matters was fortified by my study of Jewish history. From ancient days the inner councils of Judaism taught that athletics and soldiering were lower forms of social activity and not to be encouraged. Ancient literature is filled with references on the subject, and as a consequence, the world has always had fewer Jewish athletes of note than their proportion of the population would warrant, and fewer military leaders too.
But when Israel became a self-governing state, it began to produce soldiers at will, and athletes. In the United States we have had far fewer Jewish athletes than one might have anticipated, but here, too, the tradition is changing.
I suspect that any group of people on earth has about the same percentage of skilled physical specimens as any other. It is the customs of society that determine whether or not the young men of any one group seek excellence in athletics as a primary mode of expression. Blacks dominate in many areas of American sports not because they are racially superior but because for generations sports have been the one area in which they had a chance to excel. I know of few young white boys in the north whose dream of excellence is to excel in sports, although there are still many in the south. But there must be thousands of black youths who have no other aspiration, especially those tall enough to play basketball.
It will be interesting to see what happens if soccer becomes fashionable in the United States. Then superior size will not be an advantage, and I suppose that our experience will be much like
the rest of the world’s. There will be a few marvelous black players like Eusebio of Portugal (via Mozambique) and Pelé of Brazil. But there will be an equal number of outstanding whites, like Johan Cruyff of Holland, Gerhard Müller of Germany, Dino Zoff of Italy and George Best of England.
The life of the black in sports cannot be understood unless one knows about the Rucker, for this summer tournament played in Harlem by famed professionals, college stars and playground phenoms is the essence of black basketball. It was started as an informal pickup operation in 1946 by Holcombe Rucker, a young teacher who wanted to keep ghetto kids out of the alleys. When Rucker died prematurely of cancer in 1955 it was converted into a cherished institution. When Lew Alcindor, at the height of his fame, gave a press conference in New York, someone asked ‘Where’s the Rucker being played this summer?’ and without hesitation Lew gave the address.
Three books report on the Rucker in loving detail. The Connie Hawkins story noted in Chapter I is good. Pete Axthelm’s The City Game, available in paperback, is better. And best of all is a novel by Jay Neugeboren, The Big Man, which depicts a case similar to Hawkins’. In his novel, one of the best so far written about black sports, Neugeboren casually suggests that during the notorious basketball scandals of 1951 officials at Catholic colleges were able to persuade city officials to hush up the participation of their schools, while the obloquy fell on the Jewish schools and particularly on the blacks.
These books are filled with gripping passage about the unheralded black stars who dominated playground games without landing college scholarships or professional contracts. By common consent, the greatest one-on-one player ever to operate in New York was Earl Manigault. Axthelm describes one of his moves:
For a few minutes Earl seemed to move slowly, feeling his way, getting himself ready. Then he got the ball on a fast break. Harper, who was six-feet-six, and Val Reed, who was six-feet-eight, got back quickly to defend. You wouldn’t have given Earl a chance to score. Then he accelerated, changing his step suddenly. And at the foul line he went into the air. Harper and Reed went up too, and between them, the two big men completely surrounded the rim. But Earl just kept going higher, and finally he two-hand dunked the ball over both of them. For a split second there was complete silence, and then the crowd exploded. They were cheering so loud that they stopped the game for five minutes. Five minutes. That was Earl Manigault.
Axthelm then goes on to relate how this iridescent star fell into ghetto ways, leaving behind only legend and heartache.
My favorite was a young man I never saw but about whom I heard many stories when I was doing research on this chapter. He was known simply as Helicopter, as fine a defense artist as Manigault was a one-on-oner. Axthelm tells of how Jay Vaughn, a local hotshot, had his confrontation:
I said to myself, ‘Well, fine, I’ll try him.’ and I went out there one-on-one with Helicopter. Well, it was a disastrous thing. I tried lay-ups, jump shots, hooks. And everything I threw up, he blocked. The word had gone out that Helicopter was there, and a crowd was gathering and I said to myself. ‘You got to do something. You’re getting humiliated.’ But the harder I tried, the more he shoved the ball down into my face. I went home and thought about that game for a long time. Like a lot of other young athletes, I had been put in my place.
It is from such endless playground competition against the Rucker stars like Chamberlain and Alcindor and Helicopter and Manigault that the city blacks learn their profession. After spending ten hours a day, year after year, at such schooling it is little wonder that they excel; the white boy from a small town who plays the game casually cannot expect to perfect his moves the way the city black who practices against Helicopter and Manigault can. But there is a bitterness about the play. Robert Bownes, a black assistant coach at Hunter College, explains the black player’s attitude toward the NCAA ban on dunking (jamming the ball through the basket from above):
The rule wasn’t put in to stop seven-footer (like Alcindor). It was put in to stop the six-foot-two brothers who could dazzle the crowd and embarrass much bigger white kids by dunking. The white establishment has an uncomfortable feeling that blacks are dominating too many areas of sports. So they’re setting up all kinds of restrictions and barriers. Everyone knows that dunking is a trademark of great playground black athletes. And so they took it away. It’s as simple as that.
A similar protest was launched after the Rose Bowl game in 1975, which Ohio State lost primarily because its brilliant defensive back, Neal Colzie, spiked the ball after having intercepted a USC pass and running the ball back to the nine-yard line, where a touchdown would have been probable. The referee penalized Colzie for the spike, and Ohio State got the ball on the 24-yard line, from where it failed to score. Southern Cal, reprieved, won the game in the last minute, 18–17. Spiking (slamming the ball exuberantly to the ground after an unexpected gain), like dancing into the payoff zone, is a playground tradition of black players, and Bownes is probably correct in believing that it irritates the white establishment, which has outlawed spiking and may soon outlaw the victory dance. The black is free to participate in white sports, but he damned well better conduct himself like a white man.
I have not dealt adequately with the problems of other minorities in sport, especially men from minority groups. I think it extraordinary that so few American Indians have won a major place. Jim Thorpe, Chief Bender, Pepper Martin are remembered, but not many more. Hawaiians have done rather well in sending a series of fine football players to western colleges, and certainly Duke Kahanamoku was a major figure in swimming. Laura Blears Ching is a world surfing champion. The Chicano and Filipino, because of their diminutive size, have not excelled in basketball or football, but Jim Plunkett and Roman Gabriel are fine quarterbacks. If soccer becomes a popular sport, I would expect the Chicanos to excel. But it has been in horse racing and baseball that they have begun to dominate. A large number of good jockeys are Latins—in 1963, two of the top ten; in 1974, the top four money winners—while an all-star team of Chicano baseball players could take on all comers. It is quite commendable how baseball, which fought blacks so long, adjusted so easily to accommodate Venezolanos and Puerto Ricans who could speak no English. One of the truly funny sequences in a sports film occurred in Bang the Drum Slowly when Vince Gardenia, playing the bumble-tongued manager is delivering a locker-room exhortation to translate it into meaningful Spanish; his students respond with open-mouthed astonishment at the gibberish their coach is talking. Several ballplayers have assured me that this was the truest scene in that fine movie of baseball life.
When black athletes began to make substantial gains in college and professional sports, a degree of resentment became inevitable, but the white backlash has not been discussed openly because of its ugly implications. I happened to be involved peripherally in a classic instance. When Philadelphia had a world-beater basketball team, featuring outstanding stars like Wilt Chamberlain, Billy Cunningham and Hal Greer, I was surprised and in a sense hurt to find it playing in the new Spectrum to small audiences of four and five thousand. That city had a robust basketball tradition, with many championships in its background plus some of the most exciting college basketball in the country at the Big-Five barnburners played at the Palestra. So the sparse attendance at the 76ers was a mystery.
Especially since the newly founded hockey team—the Flyers, a pitiful gang going nowhere—was packing in 17,007 paid customers game after game. Subterranean rumors began to circulate and I started a one-man investigation of just what was happening.
It was simple. Big-time sports in big-time arenas are supported primarily by upper-well-to-do families who live in the suburbs, and these people, by their own confessions to me, had grown tired of driving into Philadelphia to see a professional basketball team that was primarily black, and to hear black stars on other teams making what my friends called ‘derisive and provocative statements about race.’ Also, there was some fear that the audience at the basketball game might erupt into viol
ence, either within the Spectrum or on the parking lot. There was thus an unannounced boycott of professional basketball, while college basketball, which retained a racial mix more acceptable to the suburbs, continued to prosper.
The suburbanite could drive into the city to see a hockey game played by all-white Canadians, and patronized by an almost all-white audience, and enjoy himself in what he termed security (and in what he did not openly acknowledge, a sense of racial superiority). Here are a few quotations gathered during my study.
‘Jabbar can make all the cracks he wants, but not on my money. I’ve seen my last basketball game.’
‘I know nothing about hockey, and neither does my wife, but it’s a pleasure to go to their games. It’s on a whole different level.’
‘It costs me a bundle of dough to attend a sporting event in the city. Baby-sitter, drive in, dinner for four, parking, tickets. I don’t intend to lay out that dough to be insulted by some black agitator or get mugged on the way home.’
‘Sports have been the salvation of characters like Bill Russell and now they bite the hand that feeds them. They won’t bite mine any more.’
‘Sure, there are just as many blacks in football, and I attend every Eagles game. But the football field is a long distance away from my seat, and the players are encased in armor, and it would take a good spy to detect whether a man is black or white. But in basketball you sit right on the playing floor and the men are almost undressed and their blackness hits you right in the face.’
‘Blacks comprise twelve percent of our population. Now you know, Michener, how I fought to help them gain their fair share of jobs and teaching positions and everything else. They’re entitled to twelve percent. But not to eighty percent, or a hundred percent, which is what they want in basketball. From here on out it’s their game, not mine.’