With summer teaching, taking my last Graduate School class, getting ready for the Deland Knights Pop Warner football season and The All-Star Bloggers Show, I haven't really blogged much in the past month.  It's been a combination of not quite having the time and not quite having something to get me charged up enough to do some blogging.

That was true until I turned on Sportscenter this morning.

When I saw Chad Johnson racing a horse at River Downs I went numb.  I could not believe that 8,000 people would turn out to see a human being race an animal in the year 2007.  Johnson raced and beat Restore the Roar yesterday.  Restore the Roar's jockey, P.J. Cooksey said of Johnson "he's a fast man. That was phenomenal. When I looked over at him, all I could see were his legs; they looked like a windmill. He was a blur. I was beat bad."  I can remember Al Campanis and Jimmy the Greek referring to a Black man's legs and being fired shortly thereafter.  My how the times have changed.

My shock seemed to grow as I read numerous internet reports of the race.  There seemed to be no negative commentary and no mention of a time in American history when one of our greatest athletes had to race horses to earn a living, not just as a publicity charity stunt.  Is it me?  Am I in the minority here?  Am I out of touch with what is and is not decent in America?  Do I have a skewed view of race and race relations in this country?

 With all due respect to Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan, and Muhammad Ali, my vote for greatest athlete of all time is Jesse Owens and my vote for greatest athletic feat of all time is Owens' four gold medals in the 1936 Sumer Olympics in Berlin, Germany.  Competing in a most hostile environment, in one of the most evil physical spaces on Earth and in front of the embodiment of racism and horror, Adolf Hitler, Owens captured gold in the Men's 100, 200, Long Jump and as the anchor of the U.S. Men's 4X100 relay team.  Owens accomplishment transcended athletics and spilled over into the realm of international geopolitics and the intersection of culture and race.

ESPN's SportsCentury series did a wonderful piece on Owens and I am borrowing liberally from it over the next few paragraphs.

The image of Hitler's Brown Shirted Army marching through the stadium while the sickly chilling nazi anthem "Deutschland Uber Alles" played was like watching a horror movie played out in front of your eyes.  This was going to be Hitler's attempt to show the world that he was right about his myth of  Aryan supremacy.  In Germany, the Nazis portrayed African-Americans as inferior and ridiculed the United States for relying on "black auxiliaries." One German official even complained that the Americans were letting "non-humans, like Owens and other Negro athletes," compete.  When Owens was finished, this African-American son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves had single-handedly crushed Hitler's myth.

A proud and humble man, Owens never rubbed it in. Just as sure as he knew fascism was evil, he also knew his country had a long way to go as well in improving life for African-Americans.

"When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," Owens said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either." 

Upon Owens' return to New York and a ticker-tape parade, he had to ride the freight elevator to a reception in his honor at the Waldorf-Astoria. He was treated as a kind of an oddity. When endorsements and other opportunities didn't come his way, he made money by, among other activities, running against horses.

"People said it was degrading for an Olympic champion to run against a horse, but what was I supposed to do?" Owens said. "I had four gold medals, but you can't eat four gold medals."

While we as Americans reflect on the mid 1930's as a time when Nazism was the greatest blight on world history, we should also reflect on how issues of race and culture were not handled much better in our country.  The fact that our greatest Olympic champion could compete under the most ominous of circumstances and almost singlehandedly destroy the myth of Aryan supremacy but then come home and have to ride freight elevators, sit in the back of buses, stay out of certain clubs and restaurants and yes, have to race horses for a living in a sad testament to where we were as a nation in 1936.

Fast forward to the year 2007.  Things are not perfect in our country in the area of race but they are much better than they were seventy years ago.  Of course African-Americans don't have to ride freight elevators anymore, or sit in the backs of buses, or stay out of certain restaurants.  There are more Black Americans in U.S. colleges and universities today than ever before.  There are more Black Americans that hold positions of prominence in law, politics, business and industry than ever before.  Per Capita income of Black Americans is higher than probably 90% of the world.  Mortality rates for Black Americans are lower in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world.  Like I said, things are not perfect.  There will always be racism and ignorance in this country.  It's unavoidable.  Why someone would do something that in any way would fuel that racism and ignorance is beyond me.  Chad Johnson does not have to race horses to raise money for charity.  It is demeaning to him, demeaning to Black America and demeaning to the legend of Jesse Owens who had to race horses to survive.

Early on in his career, Michael Jordan made the conscious decision to not allow interviwers to speak with him when he was sitting in a towel at his locker.  If you wanted to interview MJ, you had to wait until he showered and put on his suit and went to the interview room.  When asked why he did this, he said it was because he wanted to be looked at and treated as a professional and that is how professionals should carry themselves.  By racing a horse (and I'm not even going to comment on the outfit he was wearing), Chad Johnson was not acting like the professional and the millionaire that he is.  By racing a horse, Chad Johnson was doing nothing more than providing ammunition to the close minded bigot who watched that clip and thought to himself "See that n***er running against a horse, how fitting" or some other hateful venomous comment.

Now you might say that it is because of pioneering athletes like Jesse Owens that Chad Johsnon has the right to race a horse if he wants to.  To me, that's just bullshit.  You can also say that Johnson has the right to sing old slave songs while performing in white face at the local country club to raise money if he wants to but unless you are a member of the KKK, you would probably agree that that would be wrong.  Racing a horse is no different.

Seventy years ago Jesse Owens had to race horses to make a living.  Chad Johnson does it as a publicity stunt.  I don't know what Jesse Owens would say to Chad Johnson given the opportunity but I do believe in my heart that he is rolling over in his grave right now.