Bailey Has Dream to Show NFL Is a Rainbow Coalition

Robert Bailey has a dream. He’d be the first to admit that it’s not of Martin Luther King Jr. proportions, but you can bet King would have approved.

Bailey, a Ram cornerback, wants the rest of the world to know that NFL football is really a rainbow of racial and cultural diversity. And he’s going to spread his message through a unique international football camp.

In May, Bailey, actor Danny Glover and Sonja Wiley, the founder of the International Center for African-American and Asian Relations, will be guests of the American Embassy in Tokyo where they will hold a press conference to announce the first Multi-Cultural Football Camp, Bailey’s idea for a clinic that will include NFL players from varied ethnic backgrounds.

“A lot of people look at football as solely an American sport, but there are a lot of different cultures in the NFL,” Bailey said. “I was born in Barbados. You have guys from Japan, from Hawaii, from Jamaica, but people really don’t know that. I think it’s important to let them know we can all work together.

“(Pittsburgh’s) Rod Woodson, (Seattle’s) Cortez Kennedy, (Dallas’) Michael Irvin and (Detroit’s) Brett Perriman are some of the guys who are confirmed, and a lot of guys are hearing about it through the grapevine and calling me.

“But I’m not going to take just African-American guys, I’m going to invite guys like (Philadelphia’s) Vai Sikahema, (San Diego’s) Junior Seau and (Rams’ kicker) Tony Zendejas.”

The goal is to have African-American, Pacific Islander, Latino, Asian-American and Caucasian represented when the first Multi-Cultural Football Camp debuts on May 23-24, 1994, in Tokyo and Fukuoka, Japan. Proceeds will go to ICAAAR and the Save the Earth Foundation.

Wiley, who met Bailey when she recruited him to give anti-drug, anti-gang messages at inner-city schools on behalf of Athletes and Entertainers for Kids, returned from Japan last week with some bad news for Bailey, who was still harboring hopes that the clinic would open this May.

“The Japanese are a very strategic people, and they like to take a long time to plan and execute a project,” said Wiley, who was a college exchange student in Japan from 1986 to 1988 and speaks fluent Japanese. “It’s going to happen. They love the idea and they’re going to introduce Danny and Robert at a big press conference in May.

“But Robert pouted when I told him.”

Bailey and Wiley came up with the idea for the football camp only two months ago. It has been a hectic two months. Bailey, who has been involved in every phase of the planning, hasn’t learned so much since he tried to cover Green Bay’s Sterling Sharpe in an exhibition game last year.

“We’re going through a lot of problems with some of the sponsors,” he said. “They say they want to do it, that they will do it, but they have to go through a lot of red tape to actually get it done. The logistics have been a bit overwhelming.”

The camp probably could have opened this year if they had chosen to hold it in the United States, but Japan seemed the perfect place to start.

“Japan is a very homogenous society, and they don’t have a lot of understanding of other cultures,” Wiley said. “When they think of America, they think of blond hair and blue eyes. It’s the Marilyn Monroe syndrome.

“And when they think of African-Americans, it’s the CNN syndrome. We’re either athletes or entertainers or rioting.”

Wiley says she was “never mistreated” in Japan and shocked by the infamous comments made by Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1986.

“He said African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans were like prostitutes, when they move in, your neighborhood deteriorates,” she said. “And he said that the downfall of the U.S. economy was the fault of the minorities who would rather be on welfare than work.”

She was even more outraged, however, by the response of many of her friends.

“The Japan-bashing was incredible,” she said. “What he said about me and my fellow minorities hurt, but what hurt me more was that all the black people I associated with couldn’t stand my Japanese friends anymore.

“It works both ways. That’s why ICAAAR brings Japanese businessmen here to tour black-owned businesses and we take African-Americans to Japan so they can see first-hand that (Nakasone) wasn’t speaking for a whole population.”

After talking to Wiley, Bailey figured Japan would be the perfect springboard for his unique football camp/cultural-diversity forum. American football is becoming very popular in Japan--many Japanese high schools field teams now--and the opportunities for increasing multiethnic awareness are boundless.

The three-day camps will be sponsored by Warner Bros. Japan and the Japan American Football Assn., and held at four universities.

“It’s not going to be like a clinic you put on in America,” Bailey said. “We’ll be working with older kids, high school, even college kids. The campers will get instruction from the players at their chosen position, with an emphasis on the fundamentals and techniques of their position.

“But then the students will be divided into groups and go into a classroom, where the NFL player will act as the head coach and show them the experience they go through in the classroom with their NFL team.”

The program then will veer away from football expertise and focus on the game of life. The coaches will talk about how everyone on a team, regardless of race, color or creed, has to work together to achieve success. Then they will share their own cultural and ethnic backgrounds and point out significant contributions their ancestors made in the building of American culture.

“At the end of the day, each head coach and his team will play another team,” Bailey said. “At most camps here, you throw the ball around, talk about the position and that’s it. But I wanted to include the competition aspect. By the end of the camp, we’ll have a champion team and we’ll give out awards for MVP and stuff.

“It will sort of give them a three-day NFL experience.”

Eventually, Bailey would like to see his idea expand into a worldwide operation that offered camps in a number of different sports that would concentrate on increasing multicultural and environmental awareness. At the moment, though, he’s got his hands full with the venture into Japan.

“I want the experience to be informative and fulfilling,” he said, “but most of all, I want these kids to have a good time and come away with a better understanding that we’re all one people.”