Wow, You know, I didn’t think that sports commentator Frank Deford could be any more wrong, or wrong-headed, than when he took time out to opine in a 2001 Sports Illustrated about soccer not being the American ‘cup of tea’ (if you missed it, not only did Frank submit that there was no American cultural expression or embrace of soccer, but, instead, that cleavage and the Wonderbra were fundamental to American culture).
But to hear him on National Public Radio the other morning joining in the exoneration of Fisher DeBerry, to hear him contribute to the poorest framing of any issue in the mainstream media since - well, since the assertions and apologies on coverage of the governmental lead-up to death and torture in Iraq - makes him the Bizzaro inverse of the truism, ‘even a broken clock is right twice a day.’
Deford isn’t broken - he’s actually a bright guy with some illuminating things to say, most of the time - but his take on the DeBerry nightmare, and the discourse surrounding it, certainly is. In fact it’s ultimately instructive in asking the following questions:
What is “commentary?” Is it an informed take on the knowable facts or it is wild, unsupported unsubstantiated opinion based on nothing (at least nothing investigatory or scientifically methodological)? Is it effective and insightful, or a simpletonic spouting that is as far from meaningful “comment” as one can get without becoming Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil, or Sean Limbaugh?
Deford, in leaping to the defense of a coach who ought to have known better, is looking an awful lot like the latter.
When DeBerry, the Air Force Academy football coach, after a debilitating 48-10 loss to TCU, submitted “...the other team had a lot more Afro-American players than we did, and they ran a lot faster than we did," that “...Afro-American kids can run very, very well” and that “...that doesn’t mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can’t run, but it’s very obvious to me they (African-Americans) run extremely well,” there was substantive opportunity in the mainstream to place the debate and discussion of race, ethnicity and sport into contexts and frames that force us to produce some method for our madness, some peer-reviewable thinking for our assertions.
Deford abandons this opportunity entirely, and why not? He’s a commentator, the very operating definition of which seems to mean that he’s offered the scarce and commodified platform of mass media to pontificate freely, without qualification, without any doctrine of fairness and without any real concern for critical examination of the issues.
Deford submits that the very frame on this particular issue is one of observable “fact.” It is true, Frank submits, that what DeBerry says is accurate, in this sense: we can all see with our own eyes that African-Americans occupy the “speed” positions in the elite sporting activities of our nation. DeBerry’s only mistake, in Frank’s mind, was in NOT employing “the euphemistic code that coaches and other members of the sporting brotherhood have come to guilelessly employ when talking about race” for the hypocrites in the mediascape and sporting world.
Why this is the case, says Frank, “I do not pretend to know...I am not a physiologist, an anthropologist, or a sociologist. Authorities in genetics, culture and history have all presented various explanations; I don’t know.”
And that’s the problem with Deford’s “commentary” right there. Deford offers that sloppy, slippery equivocation of the various “answers” to “why,” as if the communities honestly looking for answers in these areas find and offer equivalent evidence for all of them. That’s simply untrue.
The evidence is overwhelmingly clear.
What do we know? That a biological or genetic notion of ‘race’ has been dismissed by biologists, geneticists, and physical/cultural anthropologists.
Indeed, as the Human Genome Project and its concomitants increasingly tell us more about the human gene, notions of ‘race’ become MORE dismissed, not, as Deford would intimate, more credible, or equally so. Deford misrepresents the discourse here, and counts the observations of the Rush Hannitys of the world (or even worse, the Jon Entines) as being as credible as the studies of the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles or those found in the journal Science. Here’s a hint and a half for ya, Frank: they’re not.
What do we know? That ‘race’ remains a cultural and social construction, not a biological one.
We understand, share and offer notions of ‘race’ not because there are biological racial classifications that have sustained credibility, but because that’s how we talk, that’s how we decide to think, that’s the institutional language in which, for example, our ’commentators’ comment.
One of the hallmarks of the difference between the social and biological notions is in fact the way we articulate what are undeniably racial (and often racist) notions: there continues to be noticeable movement, a shift, from open and explicit references to fundamental biological difference (think DeBerry’s intimations here, which are totally refuted by the science) to a more ‘common-sense,’ implicit racism, based upon accepted notions of environmental or cultural difference (and this is where Deford, sadly, steps in).
Deford goes on to submit “...I am not blind, and I simply see what everybody does...” Well, no Frank. Beyond your actual ocular capability, you see what you’ve been socialized to see. Deford is working very hard to get us off of Fisher’s back by asking us to accept our cultural environment - what we see, and what we think we know - as indicative of something seemingly ‘common-sense,’ when in fact it’s indicative only of affirmation of a social construction we’ve used to explain what is biologically invalid but SEEMS valid to our eyes upon first thought. Like Deford, we often look at what’s ostensibly in front of us, and treat that as reality - the ‘way it is.’
Thankfully, unlike Deford, scientists, sociologists and others are aware that one of the rules of this reality is that the truth isn’t always intuitive, and that the first thing one thinks about something isn’t always the most correct thing one can think. Indeed, science is replete with examples of this: of how better thinking and a more rigorous process of experimentation produces better answers to questions we have. It’s how we know that the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth, how we know the speed of light and how we know that race is scientifically useless.
Deford could have drawn upon that easily available framework to engage this issue, but chose - chose - to rest replete within a framework of analysis already refuted in any credible scientific circle. Instead of authentic investigation or critical inquiry that ought to accompany the pulpit that is a national broadcast slot, Deford retreats into the land of commentary, within his own ’common sense,’ which tells him that everything other than his own eyes is as credible as everything else, just because. Worse, he asks us to join him in that fantasy.
It bears repeating: there is no biological or genetic basis for racial classification.
None at all. Not in sport. Not in anything. For scientists, ‘race’ doesn’t exist, because it doesn’t tell science anything useful, or even accurate.
Instead, convincing and substantive cultural and social studies have been and can be put forward to explain the difference in the performance of, for example, black and white athletes in certain sports. If hockey, for example, is a sport predicated upon speed, why don’t blacks dominate hockey? Why don’t the few blacks who do play the sport play only, or even mostly, “speed” positions? Why do a significant percentage of the black hockey players who do play the sport in an organized way, at all levels, play goaltender? Might there be some role our personal sport worlds play in whether or not a black person plays hockey at all? How much does it cost to play hockey? Basketball? If I’m a black male, who in my community is talking about, imitating, dressing as or otherwise embracing hockey and hockey players, today, and historically? If I’m a white male, am I hearing about becoming an elite athlete as the sole way to ‘get ahead,’ or does it appear that any and all paths - athlete, judge, doctor, engineer...commentator - are open to me?
When I attended the Air Force Academy, it was after a decade or more of (upon entering a room with my 6 foot, 7 inch dark-skinned frame) hearing “Oh you MUST be a basketball player.” I never, ever heard “Oh, you MUST be an astronautical engineer (my major during my time at USAFA).” Or “You MUST be a judge, or a doctor.”
Not even after I dazzled those folks with my commentary. Maybe I should have commented on cleavage and the Wonderbra...
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