Racism in High Places

This Saturday the National Football Conference Championship Game will feature two African American quarterbacks. Michael Wilbon in a column in the Washington Post describes this as the culmination of a great effort to root out racism from the sport. There can be no doubt that Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb are among the elite in the ranks of NFL players and quarterbacks, despite the protestations of Loudmouth Limbaugh, and this game represents a watershed in race relations.

Wilbon describes a conversation he had years ago with Warren Moon – a pioneering Black quarterback – about when Black QBs would no longer be a big deal in the league. Moon’s answer, ”…when Blacks could be backups at quarterback, hold clipboards, get traded and released, picked up by coaches with whom they had become friends at previous stops.” That’s happened and Blacks can make it and be fired based on their performance. The same pretty much goes – or is soon going to go - for coaches.

Racism and sexism are receding, however glacially, in our society. It’s unfortunate that the same goes for the United States Senate – a glacial pace of improvement in race, sex and ethnic relations. Two of President Bush’s major proposed appointees, Attorney General Designate Alberto Gonzales and the Secretary of State Designee Condoleezza Rice were treated by the Justice and Foreign Affairs Committee’s of the Senate with kid gloves because of race, ethnicity, and gender.

Gonzales was the architect of the tortured logic of the torture policy that gave this nation a huge black eye in the Islamic world. He was probed only gently by the senators and allowed to get away with what no one should have been in refusing to be drawn out on his role in the scandal.

Rice was given virtually a free pass on the contradictions in her prior statements about the Iraq War. She bristled when Senator Boxer probed these conflicting statements and for her troubles the Senator was curbed about coming close to questioning the designee’s integrity, which of course she was and should have been doing. Only because Boxer was a woman was she allowed an escape route on a charge of racism or sexism.

There can be no doubt that these two designees did what was only hinted at, yet because the Senators are indeed still in the dark ages of racism and sexism these two people who should have been exposed for what they did escaped scrutiny and will be appointed to two of the highest offices in the land.

Clearly, we have a long way to go in this country before people will be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin. It’s too bad the United States Senate is not the equal of the National Football League in this important area of human relations.

Blog on!

Wild Bill