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Tonya
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 4896
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2007 - 02:48 am: | 
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March 16, 2007
Say It Ain’t So, Joe
On the air Wednesday morning, NBC-6 sports anchor and Miami Dolphins color commentator Joe Rose commentated on, um, color — and what he said wasn’t pretty.
When a caller mentioned something about the difference between light-skinned and darker-skinned black women on Rose’s morning drive radio show on 790 The Ticket, Rose intoned that he preferred lighter-skinned black women, whom he termed “redbones,” than darker-skinned black women, or “chocolates.” And then he added that it is his understanding that most black men feel the same way.
Now, this is breaking as I write this, but Coral Gables attorney Jack Thompson, who gained national fame fighting “obscenity” and Howard Stern, has contacted the NAACP about the comments and Broward Times’ reporter Elgin Jones is digging into the matter. Said Jones, “Apparently many of Rose’s coworkers who are black women are upset about this. You know, those words can be hurtful.”
No doubt. What an absolutely idiotic thing for an employee of both the Miami Dolphins and NBC to spout off on the radio. Sounds like Rose, a tight end who played for Don Shula’s Dolphins and a year for the Rams, has been taking lessons from Al Campanis and Jimmy the Greek.
“He went on and on about how ‘redbones’ are more attractive than darker women,” says Th0mpson, who listened to the show. “To say something stupid and hurtful and dumb like that is unacceptable and I think if [Dolphins owner] Wayne Huizenga knew about it then he would do something about it.”
I don’t agree often with Thompson (ever?) but this is an instance where I do. The remarks, so far, are based on the memory of those who heard them. No tape has surfaced. Jones has requested a copy from the radio station, as well as comment from the station managers, and has heard nothing back at the time of this writing.
More on this later, I’m sure.
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/blogs/?p=632 |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 235
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 - 06:46 pm: |
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That's nothing. The AALBC review of the William C. Rhoden book I just finished claims that it vindicates most of Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder's theories -- which, funnily enough, the reviewer doesn't seem to mind!
Here's an excerpt from the AALBC review:
Also of interest is how the book, posthumously, gives credence to most of the notions which cost the late Jimmy the Greek his job when he related anecdotes about ante bellum plantation owners breeding slaves for muscularity. Now we learn that blacks did dominate the field back then whether in horseracing as the country’s first jockeys or in track as sprinters at events staged to entertain white spectators.
http://reviews.aalbc.com/forty_million_dollar_slaves.htm
Troy, now do you see what I mean? William Rhoden does nothing of the sort. He doesn't give any credence at all to notions of racial superiority, let alone pseudo-scientific explanations of why black athletes dominate certain sports. In fact, he uses a couple of sports analogies to explain why he doesn't get drawn into such arguments: "Those debates for me are like play-action passes designed to suck you into the line, pump fakes designed to entice you to leave your feet." However he does present an analysis of the qualitative aspects of "black style" in sports, a very Ellisonian concept.
Secondly, even if you haven't read the book, you can recognize that it's counter-intuitive to discuss the "breeding" of humans for muscularity (as well as size, which Snyder also contended) and then in the next sentence to talk about the domination of "jockeys" (who, as you know, are not known for their bigness and muscularity). And although there is some mention of Antebellum running competitions, there's nothing at all in the book about "track."
Rhoden's point about jockeys is not so much about why black athletes like Isaac Murphy dominated the sport of professional horse racing in the 19th, 18th, and 17th centuries (although he does give some historical reasons), but rather how they were eventually excluded. He uses the example of the Jockey Club, formed as the re-licensing agent for the sport of horse racing, which refused to re-license black jockeys, even though they dominated the sport and had accounted for 13 of the 15 jockeys in the first Kentucky Derby of 1875. From this the author draws a historical principle he calls the "Jockey Syndrome," which holds that whenever black athletes achieve too much prominence or power, there's a knee-jerk reaction on the part of owners and the rules are changed.
Without rehashing Snyder's comments, I'll just say that the part which interests Rhoden is Snyder's expression of white fears about black coaches "taking over" in the same way that he believes black athletes have taken over sports (not that this fear is justified):
The more interesting part of Snyder's comment reflects a more substantial concern. He said that the only place white people dominate sports is in coaching, and if blacks "take coaching, as I think everyone wants them to, there is not going to be anything left for the white people." -- Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves
Isn't that also the basis of Rush Limbaugh's more recent comment about Donovan McNabb and the so-called "social concerns" in the NFL which have a putative interest in seeing black athletes advance in that position (which Limbaugh was loath to admit is one from which black athletes have historically been excluded)?
Here are the rest of Rhoden's comments about "The Greek":
In 1988, the late Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder created a firestorm when he said that African American athletes were physically superior because they had been bred for the role. Black athletes, he said, "can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs. I'm telling you that the black is the better athlete and he practices to be the better athlete and he's bred to be the better athlete, because this goes all the way back to the Civil War when, during the slave trading, the owner, the slave owner, would breed his big woman so that he would have a big black kid, you see." -- Rhoden, ibid
But what do you expect from a reviewer who calls The Audacity of Hope the worst book of the year but calls "White Men Can't Hump" one of the best?
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