The Controversy Over Blacks and Sports

Please! Can’t we in this country knock off these racist “studies”?

Just because black athletes are dominant in one or two sports (such as some track events and basketball), why must Tom Brokaw or anyone else produce a television special on that subject? Because it is sensational, that is why!

Actually, this is old stuff. When Jesse Owens, et al., were prominent in track and field in the 1930s, whites came up with all sorts of weird explanations for the supposed superiority: longer heels, bigger hips . . . such trash.

Despite the pseudo-intellectualizing of Robert Malina cited by Rosenberg, it remains true that race has nothing to do with black success in track and field.

I don’t often agree with Harry Edwards, the white media’s favorite sociologist, but in this case he is right: Poorer people, not merely blacks, tend to excel in sports. The era of the Stan Musials and all those sons of white miners back in the East wasn’t all that long ago. How can we forget the eras in which the Irish and the Italians were more prominent in sports than they are today?

A.S. DOC YOUNG

Los Angeles