White Athletes--Fact and Fiction: Destroying Myths

Memo to Brooks Johnson, the Stanford track coach who, in an effort to knock down the damaging (he says) conception that black athletes are inherently superior speedsters, says he is going to go out and find a white Carl Lewis.

Dear Brooks: Pack a lunch.

And while you’re out there searching, bring back a white Spud Webb, a white Dominique Wilkins, a white O. J. Simpson, a white Jerry Rice, a white Bo Jackson and a white Wilt Chamberlain.

Johnson made his remarks on an NBC special Tuesday night, “Black Athletes--Fact and Fiction.” The program was essentially a debate whether or not black athletes have a genetic edge over whites, mainly in terms of leaping and sprinting ability. No conclusion was reached. There was a sub-debate: Is it racist and damaging to bring up the subject?

I don’t have all the answers, which is probably why Tom Brokaw didn’t invite me on the show. But as a long-time white person, and a former semi-athlete, I would like to slam-debunk a few myths about the white athlete.

Myth: White guys don’t jump as high as black guys because we’re more concerned with the cerebral parts of basketball, like perfecting the art of coming off a high-post back-pick.

Fact: Given the choice, we’d rather slam, dunk you very much. Slam-dunking is one of the most exhilarating things you can do in sports, even if you’re by yourself on a playground.

Saying white guys don’t leap because they don’t care to, or don’t strive to, is like saying Charlie Hough throws a knuckleball because he feels it is more artistically satisfying than throwing his 98-m.p.h. fastball.

I played high school basketball on an all-white team. Our coach believed in the leap, and he drove us mercilessly through state-of-the-art jumping drills and jump-oriented weight-training. We wore ankle weights and skipped rope and jumped and jumped until we cried and cried.

Did it work? Sure, we all jumped better. You should have seen us. A few of us could dunk a tennis ball, or a lunch sack, if the floor was springy enough.

Myth: White guys are just as speedy as black guys, but track coaches won’t give us a chance to run sprints because of the racial myth. They make us all run the steeplechase.

Fact: Every track coach, of every color, was born with a stopwatch. He or she will use that stopwatch to time anyone in a 100-meter dash--you, your grandmother, your dog Spot. The quickest of the lot will be cheerfully and forcefully directed into sprinting.

Myth: We whites go in for distance running and endurance events because sprinting requires too little training and we’re real ambitious.

Fact: We whites are just as lazy as the next group. Maybe that’s why we gravitate to the longer races. The training for the sprints is, if anything, more gut-wrenching and grueling than distance-event training.

Myth: White toddlers score consistently and dramatically lower than black toddlers in coordination tests, not for genetic reasons, but for cultural reasons.

Fact: Maybe this is a myth. If it is, it’s high time us white folks were let in on the training secrets of black parents. What are blacks doing to their little children to give them such markedly superior early coordination?

I can tell you this: White folks are just as eager as any other folks to have their kids excel in athletics. What are we doing wrong? Are the golf clubs in the crib a bad idea?

Myth: We whites funnel blacks into sports so that we can take all the good jobs, like running General Motors, driving beer trucks and writing sports columns, while blacks are stuck with jobs as touchdown scorers and human highlight films.

Fact: Show me one--just one--successful white CEO, senator, truck driver or sportswriter who didn’t go into his profession as a second choice, after somewhere along the line trying but failing at being the next Carl Lewis, or the next Jeff Lamp.

Myth: Whites who believe that blacks have a genetic edge in athletics automatically believe that whites are therefore more intelligent.

Fact: What? Give me a break.

Myth: Whites want to prove that blacks are naturally superior, so we can denigrate their athletic accomplishment as a mere quirk of genetics.

Fact: Sadly, I’m sure some whites feel that way. I’m also sure that for a whole lot of whites, when we watch a Dr. J or a Carl Lewis, those kinds of thoughts never enter our simple minds.

Myth: Whites don’t become running backs and wide receivers because white coaches, fans and owners want to exploit the blacks.

Fact: Trust me, whites would be just as happy exploiting other whites.

In the meantime, I wish Brooks Johnson luck in his search for the white Carl Lewis. It could turn out to be my 4-year-old son, who is pretty damn quick and shows no affinity for the steeplechase.