Practicing Long-Distance Racism

When more than 50,000 runners toe the starting line Monday in Boulder, Colo., for one of America’s largest road races, will anti-affirmative action campaigners Ward Connerly, Gov. Pete Wilson, Florida Rep. Charles Canady and House Speaker Newt Gingrich blast the race for reverse discrimination?

The organizers of the Bolder Boulder race have made up new rules that will allow only three runners from Kenya and three each from other foreign countries to compete. Any American who finishes in the top five will earn double the prize money. This virtually ensures that the elite runners will be mostly white Americans.

The Bolder Boulder organizers are the latest to join the escalating movement to limit (or ban outright) Africans from races and award Americans a bigger hunk of the prize money. They’ve made this bit of reverse discrimination official by forming the U.S.A. Circuit, which pays prize money almost exclusively to Americans. The circuit has been endorsed by the U.S. Track and Field Federation.

The squawk about foreigners taking over American road racing is hypocritical and racist. When white British, Norwegian, Australian and New Zealand runners overran American road races in the late 1970s and ‘80s, there were no complaints about foreign domination of racing. There is no outcry to bar Canadians from American hockey teams, Russian skaters from U.S. skating competition, South African golfers from tournaments or French and British players from tennis tournaments in the U.S.

If European nations decided to indulge in athletic protectionism and limit the number of Americans who can compete or reduce their prize money on the lucrative European track circuit, Americans would howl in protest.

Racing organizers, however, aren’t really concerned with banning foreigners from American competition. They’re concerned with the Africans, or more specifically the Kenyans. Although other countries have world-class caliber runners, they do not have them in the numbers that the Kenyans do. They claim that the Kenyans are just too good, and they’re right. In 1997, Kenyan men grabbed the top spots in the New York, Honolulu and Boston marathons. The Kenyans finished first and second in this year’s Boston marathon. In the 1997-98 Professional Road Racing Circuit, which awards $379,000 in prize money, Kenyan men occupy the top seven places. There are no American runners in the top 25.

While the Kenyan runners, by the standards of their country, where annual per capita income is $280, have become fabulously wealthy, they have not literally taken American money and run. In many cities, they have conducted popular clinics for young runners. This year’s Boston Marathon winner, Moses Tanui, publicly invited American runners to train at his running clinic in Kenya. But this means nothing to those race directors who want the Africans out of American racing. They are scared that hordes of black Kenyans dominating races will make it harder to get corporate dollars and media attention for their events.

In promoting this reverse discrimination, the organizers of Bolder Boulder and other races ignore the fact that distance running never has been the sole property of any one country. It is and always has been an international sport that aimed to break down racial and gender barriers. Their white elitism also makes a cheap mockery of the much-touted Olympic goal of promoting international harmony among the athletes and peoples of the world.

Even though the move to ban the Kenyans panders to virulent national chauvinism and racism, rewards mediocrity and guarantees that Americans will be even less competitive in road racing, the director of Bolder Boulder still defiantly declares that American sponsors want American winners or at least Americans among the top finishers. This is blatant advocacy of preference over merit and quotas over qualification.

Again, I ask, will the outspoken opponents of affirmative action who preach to women and minorities the importance of talent, ability, performance and hard work protest a policy that rewards less-qualified white Americans?

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Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the author of “The Crisis in Black and Black.” E-mail: ehutchi344@aol.com.