Symbolic Gestures Fall Short

I ain’t gonna play Sun City.

--Artists United Against Apartheid, 1985

I ain’t gonna play Sun City . . . or Phoenix . . . or Tempe . . . or Tucson.

--Football United Against Arizona, 1990

America in the 1990s is a country infatuated with symbols, where the burning of a flag can inflame the public fervor but the plight of the homeless can’t; where Just Say No buttons are considered the solution to the drug problem; where one glib catch-phrase about reading lips can decide a presidential election; and where Arizona can be branded the new Pretoria because its voters rejected a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

That’s the thing about symbols: They’re simple. They’re not messy. They make us feel better about ourselves because they enable us to take a stand without getting sweaty or dirty or personally involved.

This is why the NFL decides to fight racism by threatening to pull the 1993 Super Bowl out of Phoenix--and not addressing the issue of why the league has but one black head coach and no black general managers.

This is why college football jumps on the same bandwagon by threatening to move the Fiesta Bowl from Tempe and castigating teams for accepting bids to Tucson’s Copper Bowl--but shrugs its shoulders at a system that exploits black athletes for millions of entertainment dollars, only to shove them out four years later without degrees or, worse, as functional illiterates.

Of course, it is an embarrassment that Arizona voted against a Martin Luther King holiday. It is also an embarrassment that two other states, Montana and New Hampshire, fail to observe the same holiday.

But why make it an issue now? Arizona has been without a Martin Luther King holiday since 1987. Why was there no outcry when the NFL first awarded the Super Bowl to Phoenix? Why was there no protest when Bill Bidwill decided to move his Cardinals from St. Louis to Phoenix? Why were there no condemnations when Notre Dame and West Virginia chose the Fiesta Bowl for their national championship showdown?

And if Arizona is to be blacklisted as a racist state, what is big-time sports going to do about the rest of the country?

What about San Diego, where voters refused to rename Market Street as Martin Luther King Jr. Way, where the board of port commissioners refused to name the new convention center after King?

What about New Orleans, where the 1990 Super Bowl was staged despite the fact that David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan member, was holding a public office in the state of Louisiana?

What about Miami, where the 1989 Super Bowl was staged while race riots raged in the streets?

What about Charlotte, home to the NBA Hornets and the type of sentiment that can reelect Sen. Jesse Helms, the old segregationist who based his recent campaign on an anti-affirmative action platform?

What about Birmingham, where some of this nation’s bloodiest racial skirmishes were fought and where the All-American Bowl is still played?

What about Washington, D.C., where the NFL team that plays in the nation’s capital is known as the Redskins ?

What about Cleveland, which has a baseball team known as the Indians?

What about Boston, home to the whitest baseball team in the land? Here is where the best black player in the history of the franchise, Jim Rice, retires and the Red Sox honor him by having Rice share his “day” with Bob Stanley, who was nothing more than an average white relief pitcher.

And what about the frightening kind of Al Campanis thought that still permeates much of major-league baseball? In the dugouts and the press boxes of the American League, you hear it whispered that the reason the Toronto Blue Jays don’t win is because they have “too many Dominicans”--replete with all the hoary stereotypes: They’re too hot-headed, they don’t play together, they fold under pressure.

Too often, these whispers are acknowledged only by a nod.

The problem with big-time sports entering the political arena on one issue is that it leaves itself open to hypocrisy on so many others. Racism in sports, as in society, begins at home--and neither the NFL nor the NCAA has its own house entirely in order.

No doubt, racism figured in the defeat of the Arizona King Day. But the outcome is clouded by a variety of outside factors, including the NFL itself.

A week before the election, it was leaked--or planted?--that the NFL would consider pulling the Super Bowl if Arizona rejected the King measure. Previously, several polls had indicated that voters would pass the initiative by a 10- to 15-point margin.

But many perceived the leak-plant as blackmail, dug in their heels, and voted no simply over principle. The NFL made itself an issue when the only one that should have mattered was the proper honoring of a great civil rights leader.

After the fact, it is too easy to grandstand; it is difficult to look bad by taking the anti-Arizona stand on this one.

The NFL and the NCAA can do much better, much more. How about some affirmative action inside NFL front offices and within NFL coaching staffs? What about taking NCAA television money and using it to increase educational opportunities for minorities?

Ironically, the Fiesta Bowl stands to do more real good by staying and playing than symbolically pulling out. The bowl is planning to pay each team an additional $100,000, to be earmarked for minority scholarship programs.

That isn’t as dramatic as moving the bowl to another state.

Only more constructive.