America ready to peg Barry Bonds as “Bad Negro,” says WUSTL essayist Gerald Early
Gerald EarlyWhile baseball purists may be poised to place a “steroid-fueled” asterisk next to Bond’s name in the record books, to do so would be a mistake, one that follows an unfortunate pattern in the history of blacks in American sports, suggests Gerald Early, Ph.D., a noted essayist and book author who has written extensively on black culture and sports.
Blacks aren’t playing baseball simply because ‘they don’t want to,’ says Gerald Early
NO BYLINEGerald Early’s “Unpopular Answer to a Popular Question.”As Major League Baseball prepares to celebrate the 60th anniversary on April 15 of Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the “color barrier,” there’s been a groundswell of dire warnings about the diminishing ranks of African-Americans on big-league rosters. Some say young urban blacks are isolated from the game by racism, poverty and little access to facilities, but Gerald Early, Ph.D., a noted essayist and black culture expert at Washington University in St. Louis, has a much simpler explanation: “Black Americans don’t play baseball because they don’t want to.” More…
Brown v. Board of Education, 50 years later
Photo courtesy Library of Congress.From left, attorneys George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall and James M. Nabrit Jr. congratulate each other following the U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional.When the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Brown v. Board of Education ruling 50 years ago, it based its opinion on the premise that the lives of African-Americans were irreparably harmed by the stigma of segregation, leaving their lives bereft of hope and opportunity. Not all African-Americans accepted this idea, however, leading to skepticism about the Brown decision, says Tomiko Brown-Nagin, J.D., Ph.D., an associate professor in Washington University’s School of Law and in the Department of History in Arts & Sciences. “Although black ambivalence about Brown may appear to be a phenomenon of recent vintage — one connected to the ‘black pride’ movement of the late ’60s and ’70s or the multicultural movement of the early ’90s — in fact it has deep historical roots,” she says. “The historical record should be revised to correct received wisdom: the notion that African-Americans across time and place uniformly supported the campaign to integrate the schools is an historical misconception.”