Boxing fans have spent the last few decades searching in vain for the Great White Hope, the white boxer who would someday rise up and reclaim the heavyweight championship, but it hasn't happened. (If memory serves, Gerry Cooney was the last legitimate white contender, but Larry Holmes disposed of him easily in 1981.) On the one hand, you can call this racism -- why should the color of the heavyweight champion of the world be important? But on the other hand, it's perfectly natural. We identify with our heroes because we see something of ourselves in them: you might admire a particular player's work ethic because it reminds you of your father, or you might follow another player because you went to the same high school. Or you might be drawn to someone whose skin is the same color as yours.
Which brings us to the case of Larry Bird, NBA Hall of Famer and self-proclaimed hick from South Lick (the town in Indiana where he grew up). In an interview to be aired Thursday evening on ESPN, reporter Jim Gray sat down with Bird, along with Magic Johnson, LeBron James, and Carmelo Anthony. ESPN's idea was to have these four players, two legends and two legends in the making, sit down with each other and casually discuss basketball and some of the issues confronting the NBA. A nice puff-piece for basketball fans to watch before flipping over to ABC for Game 3 of the NBA Finals.
As it turned out, ESPN got more than it bargained for. Apparently without being aware that he might be jumping headfirst into a controversy, Bird made several interesting comments. First he said that the league needed more white stars, a statement which surely raised a few eyebrows. His reasoning, however, seemed sound. "I think it's good for a fan base because, as we all know, the majority of fans are white America. And if you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get them a little excited."
I can let that slide, but he continued down the slippery slope, saying "...it is a black man's game, and it will be forever. I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American." Hmm. Are the best mathematicians all Asian? The best cooks women? Are the best leaders white? Has Larry been hanging out with Paul Hornung and Reggie White recently? Imagine Spike Lee saying that all the best film-makers are white. Picture Condoleezza Rice admitting that global diplomacy is a man's domain. But wait, things get stranger.
Bird went on to drop this bombshell: "The one thing that always bothered me when I played in the NBA was... when they put a white (defender) on me." He would go on to say that it made him feel disrespected.
So one thing seems clear. Larry Bird, who happens to be white, doesn't think that white people are good at basketball, so white guys didn't have any business trying to guard him. Or at least I think that's what he said; I'm having trouble following Larry's logic.
This isn't racism, but it's still problematic. Bird thinks what he thinks, and the NBA is certainly predominantly made up of black players, but the perpetuation of stereotypes is dangerous nonetheless. A casual comment claiming that the best athletes are all black diminishes the effort and accomplishments of non-white athletes and contributes to a racist perception that blacks are more athletic than academic. Half way into the first decade of the twenty-first century, it's time we all realized that.
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