Racial Language Examined
Pro Football Hall of Famer Paul Hornung’s recent statement that Notre Dame should lower its academic standards to get more black athletes caused quite the frenzy. The comment itself is perplexing; after all, Notre Dame’s roster is 55 percent African-American, considerably higher than the national average of 44 percent. Notre Dame also graduates 80 percent of its black football players, according to South Bend NBC affiliate WNDU. To say that Notre Dame is not getting black athletes, or that these athletes cannot survive Notre Dame’s academic standards is simply factually wrong.
Still, Hornung’s comments and the reaction they received merit some attention. The comments were criticized as insensitive, and rightly so. However, this incident illustrated a double standard that exists in our culture today.
In 1989, the NCAA passed Proposition 42, which declared athletes with a GPA below 2.0 or SAT scores lower than 700 ineligible. Unfortunately, it was attacked by many as discriminatory. John Thompson, basketball coach at Georgetown University, famously walked off the court to protest the standards. Eventually, the NCAA would cave.
Hornung and Thompson were making largely the same argument - that minority players needed lower standards. True, Hornung was much less articulate in his view, but he bluntly said what Thompson and others have long claimed. So why then is he denounced as racist, but not Thompson?
This incident illustrates a larger event at work in American today: the debate over racial preferences. Affirmative action has been in effect in our country for years. Black leaders and white liberals don’t argue that affirmative action is racist, even though it makes the same assumptions as Paul Hornung. It assumes that African-Americans cannot compete at the same level as whites.
This line of thinking is flat-out wrong. Consider this: In 1940, the poverty rate for black families was 87 percent. By 1960, it had fallen to 47 percent. By 1970, it had dropped to 30 percent. These statistics are astounding, especially when you consider all the difficulties African-Americans had to overcome, such as Jim Crow laws and racist political leaders like George Wallace.
During the 1970s, something changed. The first affirmative action program on the federal level was signed by President Nixon in the early‘70s. Given the remarkable advancement made by African Americans prior, one would assume that the poverty rate would continue to plummet. In reality, it fell exactly one percent during the 1970s.
Though one of affirmative action’s goals is to reduce racism, in practice it actually promotes it. The obvious way, of course, being that it denies more qualified applicants a job or spot in school based solely on skin color. But it also causes resentment towards African Americans. It leads many to believe that black students in certain colleges don’t really belong there. It also perpetuates the erroneous belief that blacks cannot advance on their own. Such a belief is ludicrous, especially when one considers the statistics cited above.
This story is rarely told by anyone. White liberals politicians certainly don’t want this message to get out because they are dependant on the African American vote. Certain black civil rights leaders, like Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, might find themselves out of work. White conservatives are often afraid to bring such ideas up for fear of being called “racist” or “insensitive.”
In reality, it is those who perpetuate the lie that blacks cannot compete at the same level as whites who are truly guilty of insensitivity. They lash out violently at anyone who dares question their views. A good example is Justice Clarence Thomas. A qualified man who worked his way from poor beginning in Georgia to the U.S. Supreme Court should receive universal applause, but he didn’t. He was attacked viscously by character assassins. Even today he is still routinely denounced as an “Uncle Tom” or worse.
Currently, Justice Janice Rogers Brown sits in limbo as Senate Democrats filibuster against her appointment to the federal bench. Ted Kennedy has called her a “Neanderthal.” Another nominee, Miguel Estrada, has already withdrawn his name. A Democratic memo claimed, “They [leftwing interest groups] also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment.” I wonder what the reaction would be if Republican had said something so blatantly racist? Actually, I don’t. I already know. Anyone remember Trent Lott?
Which brings us back to Paul Hornung. While we can all rightly denounce what he said, he was simply using the same reasoning as our friends Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, and countless others. Maybe it’s time to stop giving them a free pass.
John Brown is a senior in political science and history at the University of Tennessee @ Knoxville. Contact him at johnnyb325@aol.com, or visit www.johnnorrisbrown.com. This column originally appeared in the April 8, 2004 edition of The Daily Beacon, available here.