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Resentment of black advancement in athletics is especially fervent because sport epitomizes the ideal of male perfection. Many white men find it disturbing that a black might best fulfill that ideal (and might collect the accompanying glamour and money). Thus, after Jack Johnson captured the heavyweight championship in 1908, the urgent search began for a "great white hope" to reclaim the crown. Some 60 years later, when no white fighter could manage to win the title in the ring, whites took solace in a cinematic champ, Rocky. The current pro football season cast up another unsettling black breakthrough. Black quarterbacks for the first time started on three pro teams: Randall Cunningham for the Philadelphia Eagles, Warren Moon for the Houston Oilers and Douglas Williams for the Super Bowl-bound Washington Redskins.
In an earlier era, a black athlete, no matter how gifted, could not realistically hope to become a star pro quarterback. Coaches believed that blacks genetically did not have enough intellect to call plays. Also: white players would not accept the leadership of a black field general. And of course: blacks won't measure up in clutch situations -- a view revived by the Greek in his statement that the Redskins' Williams might "choke" under pressure. As black Basketball Player Isiah Thomas pointed out last year during a storm of opprobrium about his views on Larry Bird, sportswriters are always dubbing black stars gifted or natural athletes while labeling white standouts brainy and hardworking.
No doubt years of daily hoops and playground stratagems could produce "natural" stars in the whitest suburbs too. The aspirations of ghetto youngsters, though, are distorted by another potent myth -- one that ironically will be strengthened by the success of Cunningham, Moon and Williams -- that professional sports can be a way out of poverty for a significant number of young black men. Only one of every 1,000 high school football players ever makes it to the pros -- hardly good odds, as the Greek might put it. Those searching for a better life would be well advised to pour the energy they now focus on improving their slam dunks into hitting the books. Excluding, of course, Mandingo.