This past Sunday, 126 million people watched the Super Bowl pitting the Kansas City Chiefs against their eventual conquerors, the Philadelphia Eagles. The population of the United States is estimated to be around 340 million,which means about 37% of us watched the game, while 63% did something else. I watched the game but my wife did not. She usually dedicates Super Bowl Sunday to trimming her rose bushes. I’m OK with all of that. But what irks me deeply are those who don’t just ignore the game, but dismiss sports completely as something drawing too much attention and resources, shoving into the shadows other important parts of our culture such as bass fishing and haiku. Some of those people make the mistake and refer to athletic competitions not by their specific name, but by the pejorative term sportsball. The kinds of people who use this word often wear Doc Martens, drink herbal tea, and study French on Duolingo.
All sarcasm aside, and usually after I have calmed down, I endeavor to explain to those folks the importance of sports in our history and culture. The core of my argument is this: To fully understand this country, to understand the issue of racism, we must look at the history of sports, study the stories of our great athletes, and come to see that it is in the arenas of competition—fields, courts, pools and gyms—that we have grappled with fierce prejudice and grown towards acceptance and appreciation. And it seems this month, Black History Month, is a great time to look at race and sports because, to put it simply, Black athletes have been among our most important civil rights leaders far back in the past, and right now. Many have used their voices and actions to fight for equality, while others were just themselves—gifted, hard working, aspiring competitors, whose success made us all, to borrow the slogan, want to “Be Like Mike.”
As a long-time teacher, whether it was with elementary school kids or in the Sports Literature classes I taught at Encinal High School, I’ve been an advocate of sports and athletes. Here then is a consideration of three African American athletes—each a hero of mine—who played under trying conditions, achieved success nonetheless, and became worthy of their Halls of Fame, our history books, and our hearts.
I am a San Francisco Giants baseball fan and therefore, since my formative years watching games on our black-and-white TV broadcast on Channel 2, KTVU, I have been raised to loathe the Los Angeles Dodgers. Long before they used all the money in the world to lure all the best players into wearing blue and white, they were hated because, sigh, alas, they beat my guys more often than not. And yet on the inner elbow of my left arm I have the number 42 as a tattoo. Why? If you don’t know, then shame on you, because 42 was the number worn by Jackie Robinson, who in 1947, seven years before Brown vs Board of Education desegregated schools, broke the color barrier and became the first Black major league baseball player when he stepped onto the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Want to know more? See the 2013 movie 42, or read In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord or Baseball’s Great Experiment by Jule Tygiel. Robinson’s number is retired all throughout baseball and if ever an athlete’s likeness is put on money, they should make a 42-dollar bill and put Jackie’s face on it.
I have a Muhammad Ali tattoo on my left upper arm, not because I ever roamed the squared circle or worked the speed bag, but because I read King of the World by David Remnick and basked in the legendary champion fighter in both his vocation and avocation. Three-time world champion and Olympic gold medal winner, Ali was vilified for having converted to Islam and rejecting the Vietnam war. And as a measure of our growth as (white) people, he was stripped of his title back then, had to fight at the Supreme Court not to be jailed for refusing to be drafted and deployed, and then years later was invited to light the torch at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He stood on the platform, trembling from Parkinson’s Disease, as he was celebrated for his heroism. Ali terrified me as a kid—I was a Joe Frazier fan, a gifted boxer but a less complicated person—but now I say we ought to add a face to Mount Rushmore, that of Ali, arms raised, standing over Sonny Liston, because he was and always shall be the greatest.
Colin Kaepernick used to be the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers. He led them to the Super Bowl in 2013, using his speed and arm to bring his team to within three points of victory. It should have been a promising start to a full career. But three years later he did something so outrageous, so controversial, so misunderstood, that it ended his football career: He chose to kneel during the National Anthem as a protest for the racial injustices people of color were experiencing in this country. After that, maybe because he was not a seemingly quiet woman, like Rosa Parks, and started wearing his hair in braids or ’70’s-style long, Kaepernick was both reviled and unable to get a job on any NFL team, despite what most saw as his substantial skills. He has gone on to write children’s books, produce television shows, and speak and demonstrate for social justice. Hopefully over time our society will evolve to the point that he will be invited to light the Olympic torch, get his number retired, or at least be acknowledged for the courage it took to say no, I cannot stand for what’s wrong in America.
Many other Black American athletes are worthy of study and adoration, including tennis players Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson, and Serena Williams; track athletes Tommy Smith and John Carlos; footballer Jim Brown; and hoopsters Kareem Abdul-Jabar and Bill Russell. To circle back to the Super Bowl, it’s worth noting that Patrick Mahomes is biracial and MVP Jalen Hurts is Black. But to football fans across the country, of all backgrounds and biases, Mahomes is #15, a Chief, Hurts is #1 and an Eagle, and both are admired and adored for what they do—playing sports in America. If we can love them, we can love ourselves, and love each other.
Gene Kahane is the founder of the Foodbank Players, a lifelong teacher, and former Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda. Reach him at [email protected]. His writing is collected at AlamedaPost.com/Gene-Kahane.
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