To Harry Edwards, Drugs Aren’t a Case of Black and White

Harry Edwards has an unusual talent, of which he is justifiably proud. He is able to offend large numbers of black people as well as large numbers of white people. Some of the time, in fact, he manages to unite whites and blacks in a common cause--them against him.

Edwards is a sports sociologist at Cal Berkeley. Many white folks were outraged when Harry led the black protests at the 1968 Olympics. Many black folks were angry when Harry put his heart and his weight behind measures to establish stricter academic criteria for participation in high school and college athletics.

Harry is always angry, and always opinionated. And he is not easily dismissed. For example, he announced the Soviet boycott of the ’84 Olympics months before the Soviets did.

I phoned Edwards to get his reaction to recent charges by Gene Upshaw, executive director of the NFL Players Assn.; Carl Eller, an NFL drug consultant, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. They claim that in the NFL, white players caught abusing drugs are more likely than black players to be shielded by team officials from media exposure. According to one report, 86% of the NFL players whose drug problems have become public in this decade have been blacks.

Naturally, Harry had something to say on this matter.

“Let’s be real,” Edwards said, angry right out of the blocks. “This is America. It’s 1986, but very little has changed in some regards. There’s not equality in society, there’s not equality in sports, particularly when it comes to the negative kinds of developments that pervade sports today.”

So Edwards agrees with Upshaw-Eller-Jackson, that black players are getting the shaft?

“My own point of view is that I couldn’t particularly give a damn about the number of black cocaine users that they publicize,” he said, his voice rising in pitch and volume. “In fact, I’m glad to see the publicity, I think we need more publicity, because perhaps it sends a message to young black kids that this is something that you don’t want to become involved in.

“You look at how this damn fool (the drug user) is blowing it. I know so many --Hollywood Henderson, Mike Norris--who have literally blown it. I think it’s good that the publicity be there. And this idea of Jesse Jackson going in and whining about discrimination in terms of the black dope users being publicized while the suspected white dope users are not, I think is lud icrous.

“Of all of the modes and realms of racist discrimination that we should be really organizing about and applying pressure against, discrimination against black dope users, and against black murderers and criminals, is way down the list of priorities as far as I’m concerned. . . . All the problems we have, and we’ve got national leaders talking about discrimination against dope users ? Be serious.

“I mean, what difference does it make how many white boys are being hung on the day that I’m standing on the scaffold with the rope around my neck? And that’s what cocaine and dope is. It’s a rope around the neck of the black athlete, that he put there. And the lever controlling the trap door is in the hands of the white owners . . . and the white-dominated media. And the black athlete has voluntarily climbed onto the scaffold and put a rope around his own neck.”

Edwards said that black leaders should be using the negative drug news to educate kids, as in: “Hey kids, here’s another real good reason to stay away from drugs. When you get caught, you’re more likely to wind up on the front pages than if you were white.”

What leaders like Upshaw, Eller, Jackson and NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle should be doing, according to Edwards, is uniting and working like crazy to develop an effective anti-drug program reaching all the way down to the neighborhood level, because here’s the bad news:

“This (the drug problem) is going to get much worse,” Edwards said. “You have (baseball Commissioner Peter) Ueberroth coming out saying, ‘We’ve turned the corner on the drug problem in baseball.’ You have Rozelle talking about ‘what a great program we have here. We’re going to turn the corner.’

“This (drug problem) has not even begun to bottom out. The kids who were born at the height of the drug culture situation--1967, ‘68--are now entering college.

“If we don’t become intelligent about how we deal with drugs now, and quit trying to make excuses and cover up and deal with all these tertiary issues, such as whose dopers are getting the most publicity, we’re gonna be in big trouble by the turn of this decade. This idea that we’ve turned the corner on this one is a joke. They do not know what’s going on. The worst is yet to come.”

What can be done?

“At some point the black folks are going to have to take responsibility, and the black athlete’s going to have to lead the way. And if they don’t take responsibility, they should be dumped. . . . We can’t continue to make these damn excuses and talk about discrimination. That’s nonsense.

“It’s like talking about discrimination when (colleges) demand 700 on an SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) in order to participate as a freshman (athlete). Somebody’s jiving somebody, and what it comes down to is we’re jiving the kids.”

The sermon was over. All I can add is an editorial amen.