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Spelman Spotlight March 12, 1980
Page 3
Sports and Politics: The Olympics Controversy
Blacks Must Oppose U.S. Boycott
By Manning Marable
Several weeks ago, in the wake
of the Soviet Union’s intervention
into Afghanistan, President Car
ter announced that he had
authorized a series of retaliatory
acts to punish the Russians. One
of his decisions involved U.S. par
ticipation in the Summer Olym
pic games, scheduled this year in
Moscow. “If the Soviet troops do
not fully withdraw from
Afghanistan within the next mon
th,” he warned, America’s
athletes would be urged to
boycott the games. “If our
response to aggression is to con
tinue with international sports as
usual in the capital of the
aggressor, our other steps to
deter aggression are un
dermined.”
Carter’s decision to boycott the
Olympic was politically popular
at home, and won the support of
most of the world’s conservative
governments, including the reac
tionary administration of
Margaret Thatcher of the United
Kingdom. The move was
shrewdly timed to coincide with
the crucial Presidential primaries
in New England, states where
challenger Edward Kennedy will
probably fare well. Since Carter
recognized that the Soviet troops
are going to remain in that far-
off, central Asian state for the im
mediate future, the call for a one
month deadline was simply a
hypocritical jesture to keep the
issue “hot” for the media, and to
further frustrate the Democratic
Senator from Massachusetts.
From the vantagepoint of
history, Carter’s emotionally
charged call to tie political
questions with sports has a cer
tain familiarity. Throughout the
black American experience,
blacks have tried to extend
democratic political principles
through the vehicle of sports.
Ironically, it has been white
America who has been the fir
mest proponent of the idea that
“politics has no place in sports.”
In 1900, for example, the
greatest professional cyclist in
the world was Marchall Taylor,
an Afro-American. Throughout
the nation he won race after race,
and earned the celebrated title of
“Black Cyclone.”
But in the age of Jim Crow,
many white competitors argued
that the presence of a black
athelete in their sport was “too
politically controversial.” The
League of American Wheelman
kept the Black Cyclone out of
many events. After one race, a
defeated white cyclist physically
assaulted Taylor. Eventually, the
sport of cycling became “for
whites only”. Politics, white
Americans insisted, had no place
in sports.
In the 1930’s, the greatest
baseball players in America were
found in the old “all-Negro”
leagues. Catcher J osh Gibson
was a greater home run hitter
than the Yankee’s Babe Ruth.
Warren Spahn and Lefty Grove
never had the control throwing a
curve ball that Leroy Satchell
about the summer games. If Car
ter and the American people
withdraw from the Summer
Olympics, a major precedent will
be established that will be vir
tually impossible to counteract.
Socialist nations and much of the
Third World, including Africa,
may boycott the Summer Olym
pics scheduled for Los Angeles in
1984.
For black America, the
question of the pending Olympic
boycott assumes even greater
significance. Historically, no
nation in the world has done
more to oppress our civil rights
and to oppose our demands for
economic and social equality
than the United States. If we ac
cept the new “logic” of white
Americans, that “politics should
have a role in sports,” then we
have no business playing for a
government that has sanctioned
the systematic murder of millions
of our people since the beginning
of slavery. To see black athletes
defending the Cold War-inspired
demand to segregate foundations
of our Movement. Eventually,
the same rhetoric and ex
clusionary tactics generated by
the Carter Administration will be
used against us again.
“It is easy and politically
profitable” for Carter to
capitulate to the anticommunist
“hardliners”, observes former
New York Times Senior Editor
John B. Oakes. “But is it
statesmanlike to do so? Is it wise
to insist that (this) is ‘the most
serious threat to world peace sin
ce the Second World War’, which
it can indeed become—if we
choose to make it so?” The
demand to elevate white
America’s political interests
above the need for world
dialogue, peace and genuine
cooperation, particularly through
the manipulation of the Olympic
games, should be rejected by the
Afro-American community, and
by all other progressive people
throughout the country.
Paige once had in his prime. And
the sterling play of first baseman
Buck Leonard would have made
Lou Geurig turn around and
leave the field. But black baseball
players were excluded from com-
netition because they were
politically (and racially) too con
troversial. Blacks played the
sport for peanuts while white
athletes acquired thousands of
dollars during the Great
Depression. But black folks were
told firmly that politics had no
place in sports.
In 1968, at the Olympic Games
in Mexico City, two Afro-
American athletes won gold and
bronze medals in the 100 meter
dash. On the awards platform.
Tommy Smith and John Carlos
raised their fists in a Black Power
salute. Their act of courage was a
statement—a symbolic
declaration that black America is
not yet free, and that the very
principles of this nation’s
Declaration of Independence and
Constitution remain a fraud
regarding black, brown and poor
people.
But white America responded:
“these two men have defied our
hallowed traditions in athletic
competition. The have the right
to hold whatever political views
they wish, but on the field of play
they must conform to the spirit of
neutrality and fairness.” As a
result, Smith and Carlos were
denounced, vilified and con
demned. Their chief defender,
sociologist Harry Edwards, was
subsequently denied tenure at the
University of California-
Berkeley. Black Americans were
warned again: politics had no
place in sports.
But now the tables are turned;
the Carter Administration grasps
for international issues to save it
self domestically. Its dismal
record on protecting minority
rights and affirmative action, its
failure to create jobs and a
decent healthcare system, and its
inability to control inflation have
led us to the brink of another
Cold War. Now, we are told
solemnly, politics must intercede
into athletics, for the survival of
decides” because of his “allegian
ce of being an American.”
The most pathetic example of
this kind of thinking from black
athletes who were preparing to
participate in the games has
come from star high jumper
Franklin Jacobs. “What the
Russians did was against the prin
ciples of what this country stands
forTTie stated. “On the matter of
a boycott, I just want to say that I
have complete faith in President
Carter and our country. Naturally
I want to jump, but more im
portantly I want to do what’s
right for America”.
star J ulius Erving commented;
I’d hate to see anyone go into
Moscow now.” I don’t think that
a country that has institued an
aggressive act by marching into
Afghanistan, and preparing to
march into other areas, would be
the proper country to host
something that stands for the
coming together of nations.” New
York Knicks Earl Monroe
declared that he would “Go with
whatever the (U.S.) government
democracy.
It is not very surprising that the
bulk of white Americans accept
this hypocrisy as fact and, in the
spirit of jingoistic patriotism,
follow behind their leader. What
is especially sad is that so many
black athletes are now prepared
to do the same thing. Once the
victims of political exclusion,
some are ready to play the same
dirty game at the world’s ex
pense.
Today’s black
multimillionaires in sports have
been eager to endorse the Olym
pics boycott scheme. Basketball
It is of critical importance here
to note that the Olympic games,
and any major international
athletic competition should not
be held hostage to any kind of
political demands. The Moscow
publication Sovetsky Sport, for
example, has stated that
theSoviet would send their
athletes to Lake Placid, New
York, for the Winter Olympics,
no matter what the U.S. did