America and race?

[JJJJ]

Fairly long post:

Ok, im not american, but watch a lot of american media and american sports in particular. Just recently Auburn hired a new football coach, and they chose a white candidate over a black candidate. I dont follow College football that much, so i cant say anything particular, but this is what former NBA player and Auburn alumni Charles Barkley had to say:

http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/sports/co...-193405/151868/

"I believe race had a factor. Of course I do," Barkley, a former Auburn and NBA star, said Monday in a phone interview with The Associated Press hours after Chizik was introduced. "First of all you can't compare these two, their records. That's not even close to being fair.

"I look at things from a commonsense standpoint, how do you interview Turner Gill and pick Gene Chizik over Turner Gill?"

Later, in the same article:

He said he agreed to serve on Auburn's search committee to hire a basketball coach before the 2004-05 season on the condition the school hire a black candidate. He pitched Mike Davis, Mike Anderson and Jeff Capel, who was then head coach at Virginia Commonwealth University, as worthy candidates. Barkley says now that Davis, Anderson and Capel all wanted the job. Auburn hired Jeff Lebo.

"They said, 'We're ready to hire a black coach,' " Barkley said. "I figured out right away they were not going to hire a black coach."

He said he went public with his complaints.

"They kicked me off the committee the next day," he said. "I have kept the secret about that for quite awhile. Clearly it's got something to do with race."

I have no idea whether the Auburn athletic department is full of KKK racists hating on black candidates and i really doubt it, but how can a person complain about race being a factor, if he himself is openly advocating for race being a factor? A person that openly joins a search committee on the basis of hiring a person of a certaing skin color, doesnt really have much to complain about if other people do it as well. But in the US this crap is tolerated for some reason, and doesnt get called out as racism?

And now people are talking about that colleges need to make a rule making it mandatory to interview "minority" candidates for head coaching jobs, just like in the NFL. But i've never understood this logic? If the department heads are as racist as race baiters claim, why would this make any difference? Why would a racist hire a person of a race he hates, just because he is forced to interview them? Also, why would a person want to have an employer that is so stupid that he hates him because of his skin color?

It really irks me, because black americans are treated, by both black and white people, as some sort of mental retards that need special rules and laws and that we should lower our expectations regarding a black person. A black person gets huge praise, especially in sports, just for simply being a normal human being, and it is just so damn demeaning. Every time there is a black athlete that can string a few words together and doesnt go shooting up nightclubs or fathering 15 illegitimate children, the announcers say stuff like "Player X really is one of the good guys in the NFL" or "Player X is a really nice guy, very articulate". At the same time 99% of the non-black athletes in the league are doing the same, but never do you hear how Peyton Manning is really articulate, or how he is "one of the good guys" in the league.

I dont see anything like this in other countries with people of mixed races, and England, where i visit every now and then, doesnt really seem to have this problem. When you hear a british person talk, there is no way of telling what race the talker in question is. And i who follow the English Premier League(soccer) a lot, cant remember there being any sort of disparity between black and white "troublemakers" in the league, and the only real troublemaker in the league i can think of, is white.

One of the biggest problems with "african"-americans(such a stupid term), is that they seem to generally be very "loyal" to people of their race, no matter of their characteristics. When most good people want to distance themselves from bad people, good black americans have this perverse sense of duty to black thugs that shoot up ghettos and terrorize neighborhoods, as if they had anything other in common with them but the color of their skin. There are only a handful of black americans that are "visible" in the media i can think of, that doesnt get sucked in this race baiting and "race loyalty" crap, and most of these people are in their 60's and 70's that were part of those first generations of blacks that became fully free. Just like the case is with immigrants in europe, the ones who actually came here in search of a better life are usually really decent people, but their offspring are the troublemakers because from the day they are born they are treated like "special needs" kids that everyone needs to be "sensitive" to, and that people should lower their expectations towards.

The sad part is that the blacks that actually are good, are being called "race traitors", sadly not only by the thugs in the ghettos, but also by more affluent people of all races.

For the ones living in the US: is my understanding of the situation correct, or have i gotten the wrong picture from simply watching sports and surfing the internet? Are there any black american members on this site? Do you know many moral black americans?

Because this really seems to be an american problem. Sure, there are lots of black crime in europe, but the main reason for that is islam. Most non-muslim black people around are just as likely to be good than any other race, but in america it seems like that isnt the case....

[Jake_Ellison]

You do make good points, but you shouldn't look at what Charles Barkley says as the norm. He's a ridiculous racist, far more so than most black sports stars.

Also, there are plenty of black Objectivists, and I'm sure some of them are on this site, but I doubt they'd feel the need to mention their race. ( I don't know if anyone asked before, actually)

I would like to add that I think you would not generalize quite the way you are, if you talked to actual black Americans, rather than relying on the media to form an opinion of them. The media distorts everything, this issue is not an exception.

Not even the fact that very few black people are Republicans deserves as much consideration as it gets: beyond the 5 percent who vote Republican, there are also plenty of black people who don't vote at all. If you count most of these people as anti-establishment (which in their case would be the Democratic Party), you'd find that there's more of a balance than you'd think.

[JJJJ]

I just watched Charles Barkley on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption and he mentioned that if Gary Patterson(white) or Brady Hoke(white) had been selected in front of Gill(black), he wouldnt have been outraged.

So, in other words: Auburn is racist, because they select an unqualified(according to Barkley) white coach instead of two qualified white coaches and a qualified black coach?

I used to like Barkley on Inside the NBA and ive always known he isnt the sharpest guy around, but ive lost tons of respect for this idiot...

[Nyronus]

I just watched Charles Barkley on ESPN's Pardon the Interruption and he mentioned that if Gary Patterson(white) or Brady Hoke(white) had been selected in front of Gill(black), he wouldnt have been outraged.

So, in other words: Auburn is racist, because they select an unqualified(according to Barkley) white coach instead of two qualified white coaches and a qualified black coach?

I used to like Barkley on Inside the NBA and ive always known he isnt the sharpest guy around, but ive lost tons of respect for this idiot...

JJJJ: to be short; Double Standards, the Best Kind of Empowerment.

To be long; this kind of behavior is very exemplary of the kind of tribalism that runs rampant in America. It only effects really the very poor or the very elite. Most people are not so bad, but the bad ones are truly a sight to see.

To my understanding, the not picked was a very skilled man so the controversy lies as to why a person who by all accounts is inferior. Also, the black coach was apparently married to a white woman, and that apparently does not sit well with people in Alabama. Most of this information though I got from my father who in all honesty knows far more about the going ons in sports than I do. So, it could be race was a factor, or it could just be that the people at Auburn are stupid. Either way Barkley sounds like a hypocrite, but then again, most race warriors tend to.

[JJJJ]

I really have no knowledge on whether the Auburn people are racists or not, and they just might be. I mean, if the "old boys club"-excuse still applies anywhere, college athletics would probably be a good candidate as even though it is a big business, it isnt really controlled by market forces and the decision making isnt all that transparent. I mean, there are just 4 black head coaches in the FBS or whatever they call div-1 these days, of about 120 schools, and if you look at the success black head coaches have had in pro sports, it is somewhat alarming....

The funny part is just that Barkley himself advocated for specifically a black basketball coach. Not a specific black basketball coach, but just a black coach in general. And then he accuses Auburn of racism?

As a non-racist, its difficult to know how the racist mind works, but i just find it really hard to fathom why a program that has hired black assistant coaches and coordinators would have that big of a problem of hiring black head coaches.

And yes, it was really weird that they picked this Chizik(sp?) dude, as he has had a terrible record, but if it would have been mainly about race, as Barkley stated, wouldnt they have picked a more qualified white coach instead of a less qualified?

Also, i dont understand why anyone who claims to be interested in racial equality, wants to shoot himself in the foot with programs forcing programs to hire or interview "minority" candidates. That just leads to every black coach being secondguessed, and regarded as not worthy of the job, and only getting the job because of quotas.

In pro sports this problem sorts itself out naturally, as teams that use something other than merit and quality as their standards, will get worse results, but in college football, where the money isnt as directly linked with the success of the team and where players tend to pick their schools more on the basis of location than level of play, its not going to be that big of a factor.

[Thales]

This is the hypocrisy built into multiculturalism. They claim that racism is wrong, while they overtly practice it and are rarely called on it. I've mentioned this many times here and have even pointed out how Obama is the postmodernists candidate and that racism very much animated his campaign and animates him. The fact is, these people are fanning the flames of racism while claiming to be on the side of the good.

Postmodernism is at war with Capitalism, America and the West, and so this is part of their way of destroying them. Postmodernists continually distort the history of America and evade the history of the world in order to put forth their twisted views. Lots of people are being mis-educated every day -- and have been for years -- and are therefore being inculcated with unearned guilt, thus resulting in these devious "intellectuals" getting away with a massive crime against humanity.

Universities, btw, are the ones pushing all of this. Auburn is likely not an exception to this.

Edited December 19, 2008 by Thales

[JJJJ]

I know sports is a fairly insignifigant part of the grand scheme of race-stuff, but lately the NBA and the NHL are the only leagues i bare to watch, simply because this race crap doesnt pop up all the time. In the NBA, its because there are so many black players and coaches that "black leaders" dont have anything to complain about, and in the NHL it is because "black leaders" dont care about hockey.

I hate the NFL and football, because its made to be such a big deal about whether there are "enough" black quarterbacks, or head coaches, and all other kinds of bs. And the "racial profiling" is also quite disturbing. I dont know how much you follow the NFL, but all black quarterbacks are compared to other black quarterbacks, and when the announcers and columnists cant think of a black qb that reminds them of another black qb, they cut corners and just randomly compare them to some black qb. I can once remember Byron Leftwich(a huge black qb, that is slower than my grandmom and cant move at all) being compared to Daunte Culpepper(a really athletic and "shifty" qb that was really quick and fast before his injuries) a few years ago, and nowadays every white wide receiver is compared to New Englands Wes Welker(a small fast guy), no matter what kind of white receiver they are. Not to this day, have i ever heard of a single white wide receiver being compared to a black wide receiver, ever.

I mean, i understand that genetics plays a huge part in what kind of bodytypes blacks and whites generally have, but its not like its a 100% true in every case.