Over the Thanksgiving break, a news report revealed that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was among a white mob in 1957 that blocked six Black students from desegregating North Little Rock High School in Arkansas.
Whether Jones was present because he was just “curious” about what was happening, as he has said, or as a willing participant in one of America’s ugliest moments is not, 65 years later, what really matters. What’s important, as The Washington Post pointed out in its report, is that Jones has never hired a Black head coach in his 33 years as owner of “America’s team.”
It’s a peculiar situation. While the workforce is nearly 60% Black men, NFL owners have passed them over 167 out of 191 times for their teams’ top job since 1989, when the modern league’s first Black head coach was hired.
For decades, Black people’s athletic talents have been exploited to the tune of billions of dollars in service to athletic programs owned or managed overwhelmingly by whites. Meanwhile, those same athletes have been disregarded when they aspire to higher stations.
This exploitative relationship comes into sharper focus in discussions about affirmative action and higher education, where Black football and basketball players playing as unpaid amateurs in the NCAA Power 5 conferences alone lost up to $1.4 billion between 2005 and 2019, according to a recent study.
Oral arguments in early November suggest that the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court is prepared to bring to an end the affirmative-action era. That would leave the landscape of higher education, particularly among selective institutions, whiter and more privileged.
Admissions considerations such as alumni heritage and athletic talent have advantaged white applicants at the expense of others, a reality the plaintiffs in the pending cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina conveniently minimize. Indeed, the “model minority” myth relied on by the plaintiffs – that Asian Americans are hard workers who don’t need diversity programs – flies in the face of analysis from Georgetown University that found that 20% of Asian Americans currently enrolled in selective colleges and universities would not have been admitted based solely on their academic performance.
While one can oppose affirmative action without being racist on the merits of theoretical arguments about fairness, the fact that there are considerations that predominantly benefit white applicants calls into question any opposition to race-conscious admissions.
Arguing that Black applicants with lower test scores shouldn’t be admitted to selective schools in the interest of educational diversity – except if they can catch a touchdown pass? That’s the very definition of exploitation.
On the other hand, placing affirmative action not within the context of historical discrimination, but with the goal of racial diversity – which has always been ill-defined and a cheap substitute for racial equality – has turned out to be a costly mistake on the part of its advocates.
“Such approaches obscure important features of public policy in the earlier decades when affirmative action was white,” wrote Columbia political scientist Ira Katznelson, author of “When Affirmative Action Was White,” a book about discriminatory programs that benefited whites during the New Deal and Fair Deal eras.
Nearly 350 head college basketball coaches, including University of Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma and former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, submitted an amicus brief in support of the defendant universities, Harvard and North Carolina. In it, they argue that Black college athletes on post-affirmative action campuses stand to be “especially harmed” as isolated diversity stereotypes.
A cynical look at their concerns might question what they and others in the sports industrial complex are at risk of losing along with a “contextualized, holistic” college admissions process. Historically Black Colleges and Universities would undoubtedly reap the profitable benefits of such a realignment. Perhaps that’s why Alabama football coach Nick Saban and others in the Power 5 conferences have suddenly taken an interest in Deion Sanders’ recruiting successes at Jackson State University in Mississippi.
However, I’m an optimist.
The history of Black folks in America has been to make a way out of no way – with or without affirmative action. And many Black athletes – from Jesse Owens to Jackie Robinson to Wilma Rudolph to Arthur Ashe to Colin Kaepernick – have stood on the frontlines of social change.
And, fortunately for the Cowboys’ Jerry Jones, it’s unlikely he’ll need to look for a new head coach any time soon. Led by Black quarterback Dak Prescott, Black running back Ezekiel Elliott and Black cornerback Trevon Diggs, along with many other talented players, the Cowboys – the most valuable team in all of sports – are having a good season.
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