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By Ellis Cose
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IF JACKIE ROBINSON HAD NEVER PICKED UP A BAT, WOULD Americans more readily remember Charles Drew? Would the brilliant surgeon, administrator and blood-plasma researcher (who died three years before Robinson's major-league debut) personify the prevailing positive image of black American manhood? Not a chance. After all, as onetime NBA star and former senator Bill Bradley points out, America and its media simply don't idolize intellectuals the way they worship performers. So Michael Jordan is more celebrated than any black physician, in the same way, notes Bradley, that Madonna shines more brightly than any white, female doctor. In a culture that lionizes entertainers and sees athletes as American heroes, Robinson was destined to be revered. His accomplishments helped to convince millions of young blacks that sports super-stardom is a viable path to success. As Art Taylor of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society puts it, "Education has failed so many that sports becomes the only dream they feel they have any control over." Why not, in short, aspire to be a god when the alternative is to be a bum?
Has America's exaltation of black athleticism created that Hobson's choice? In a strongly argued new book, "Darwin's Athletes" (344 pages. Houghton Mifflin), John Hoberman, a professor of Germanic languages at the University of Texas, claims it has. He sees little! good in the glorification of black athletes and, indeed, believes such deification adds up to an insidious blend of racism and denial. "It is time to recognize," he writes, "that the Jackie Robinson story has long served white America... as a deeply satisfying combination of entertainment and civic virtue that has simultaneously permitted disengagement from less tractable and more important interracial tasks." Wouldn't it have been wonderful, he argues, if the fearless black aviators of World War II and before had become the model for black heroism instead of a baseball player?
Even some of Hoberman's critics agree with at least part of his point. Harry Edwards, the UC, Berkeley, sociologist and consultant to big-league sports organizations, vigorously disputes much of Hoberman's thesis, but he agrees that society's acceptance of black sports figures does not necessarily lead to racial harmony. Americans "worship athletes, not black human beings," he contends. Certainly, the affection enjoyed by Jordan does not accrue to all black men-not even all who are tall, handsome and bald. Ken Griffey's baseball prowess does not ensure a warm welcome for the random black nonentity seeking to integrate an all-white neighborhood. Nor, for that matter, should it. To expect people to view every black man as they would a Griffey or a Jordan is to assume that blacks should, in some sense, be interchangeable. Also, the day has long passed when it took a ballplayer to confirm an entire people's humanity. While none of this means athletes should not be admired, it does mean they cannot, in any meaningful sense, carry the aspirations of a race, or provide an easy route to good relations between races.
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Expectations are wildly unrealistic. In one survey by Taylor, two thirds of the black youths interviewed expected to make the pros. In fact, only about one out of every 10,000 high-school athletes reaches the big leagues.
Aspirations will shift when black "pioneers in the academic domain" become as prominent in their realm as Robinson did in his, argues Stanford psychologist Claude Steele. Others think it will take a great deal more. John Carlos, a former sprinter who won fame-and also infamy-by raising a black-gloved fist on the victory stand during the 1968 Olympics, believes the solution lies in "a full-scale war to let these kids know the truth about athletics." Carlos, now a counselor at Palm Springs High School in California, notes that there is nothing natural about black youngsters' gravitating in such large numbers to athletics. There is, he points out, "a concerted effort to steer these kids toward sports" by a network of recruiters, coaches and others, all selling "a rainbow in the sky." Nothing comparable exists to push black youngsters into academic careers, at least not for those who have not already demonstrated intellectual incandescence.
That might not be a problem if children-irrespective of ethnicity-were encouraged to believe they had any number of avenues to success. Unfortunately, many inner-city teachers and parents are as blind to other options as the young people in their care. Adults of any color can be myopic, but at least white children see plenty of models of white success off the playing field.
Robinson did not create America's inequalities in opportunities and aspirations, but neither did his triumph do much to alleviate them. The mistake was in assuming that it could. As Edwards ruefully notes, "If the struggle was about anything, it's been about a baseball player being able to go out and play baseball without reference to race." Robinson's battle, in other words, was fundamentally about the right- not an inconsequential one- to play ball in an arena large enough to accommodate his talent and to be rewarded commensurately. The problem is that many of us want to believe it was really about so much more.
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