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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
ESPN's Len Elmore on race in sports: "We had this same conversation back in the '50s."
Nov 15, 2005 | In a September talk on race and sports at the University of Rhode Island, ESPN college basketball analyst Len Elmore began by speaking about the way sports has acted as a double-edged sword for African-Americans.
Sports have afforded blacks opportunities and provided heroes and role models, but theyve also been used to, in Elmores words, slam the door. The stories of early African-American sports heroes such as jockey Isaac Murphy and boxing champion Jack Johnson are as much about their banishment and ruin as they are about their athletic success.
Elmore, who is black, was an all-American basketball player at the University of Maryland who went on to a 10-year ABA and NBA career with the Indiana Pacers, Kansas City Kings, Milwaukee Bucks, New Jersey Nets and New York Knicks. After a stint as a sports agent representing football and basketball players, hes now an attorney in New York for the firm LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae.
Elmore says URI invited him to speak on race and sports because hes commented and written quite a bit about the subject in his former role as a columnist for Sports Business Journal and his current one as a TV commentator.
The intersection of race and sports being one of this white columnists favorite subjects, I invited him to speak some more about it. We talked by phone last week as he drove from a set of meetings at ESPN in Bristol, Conn.
Is sports leading, trailing or both in terms of the discussion on race in this country?
I think it's a double-edged sword. I think that, unfortunately, African-American athletes sometimes play in to the stereotypes and allow themselves in some way to become caricatures. That allows a segment of society that would do them ill to use that as an example to support their negative contentions.
Give me an example of that.
Well, a great example would be the whole hip-hop culture. Now, I'm not going to comment one way or the other about the propriety of that culture. I mean, it is what it is. But many people look at it as symbolic of self-hate, misogyny, violence, things of that nature. And then you combine that with some of the isolated incidences of domestic violence, weapons possession, drug use, things of that nature, you know, again, the segment that would do them ill, it allows them to use that as an example.
Now, the flip side of it is, sports has been more of a meritocracy with regard to who has value, who's able to utilize their skills and rise to the top on the basis of skills. It's also created, and particularly the NBA, it's created more African-American millionaires than any other industry that I can think of in the history of the United States. That kind of access and that kind of means is nothing to scoff at.
