Plenty of times, I’ve met extremely well educated people who knew nothing about sports.
This has always saddened me for collegiate and professional sports have a number of purposes other than putting on an entertaining show.
They provide society with role models, they provide goals for children who may not have any other talents, and most importantly, they are a mirror to society and a medium for change.
One of America’s great contributions to the world is anti-racist thought. The idea that race and skin color are not valid reasons for discrimination and the belief that all men truly are equal are ideals true Americans have championed and fought for both within and without our country’s borders.
In American history, one of the most potent tools for anti-discrimination has been and continues to be athletics. It’s awfully difficult for a white man to tell a black man he’s inferior while the black man the very sort of things the white man thought he couldn’t do.
Indeed, in my more cynical moments, I often think that the South would never have integrated if blacks hadn’t played football. (The statistic may have changed recently, but at one point in the last couple of years, 59 of the 60 starting cornerbacks in the NFL were black.) And certainly, everyone acknowledges the contributions of people like Jackie Robinson, Satchel Paige and Jim Brown.
I don’t claim to know why the black athlete seems so superior to the white athlete in America’s sports today (at least in football and basketball), but it is important to recognize the implications of this system, which brings us to the real point of this column – the flag.
Specifically, I am referring to the Confederate Flag in the South Carolina capitol. As I understand it, the Southern Conference has decided to move the 2002 tournament from South Carolina if the flag is not removed from state grounds; I wholly applaud them.
We have finally reached, in most cases, truly integrated athletic teams; race has no bearing on who makes the team and who plays. In my mind, this is an opportunity for an athletic statement that is just as powerful, if perhaps less publicized as Jackie Robinson’s debut in 1947 for the Dodgers.
According to defenders of the flag, its purpose is to celebrate Southern Heritage. Forgive me for my dramatics, but I don’t see anyone flying swastikas and celebrating Nazi heritage.
A significant part of the romanticized “Southern heritage” was racist thought, and to ignore that facet is to deny our own history. Implicit in the flag is a form of nostalgia for the “good old days” of the Confederacy, when good, tough, `ole southern boys “wore themselves out whipping Yankees.” Unfortunately, we don’t get to just celebrate that toughness or the good things in the South. That’s a little like hanging a poster of Hitler on my wall and telling visitors, “Oh, I’m just celebrating his ability to motivate people.”
Because racism has become so politically incorrect, racist ideals now take subtler forms with other names, like “celebrating our heritage.”
The Southern Conference has a chance to make a stand on this issue. I strongly urge that they take it.

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