January, 1988

Yes, it’s sad but true that Jimmy The Greek should have been fired – but not for the reasons he was fired. Simply put, he was fired for inciting a furor over the emotional issue of race. To make matters worse, he did it ironically and insensitively during the Martin Luther King Jr. weekend holiday. Add to that the trouble in South Africa and the recent racial violence in New York City and you have the makings of a formula which reads… Any public figure + Any analysis of why black athletes are physically superior = Loss of job.

His crime? “The black is a better athlete to begin with because he's been bred to be that way, because of his high thighs and big thighs that goes up into his back, and they can jump higher and run faster because of their bigger thighs and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes back all the way to the Civil War when during the slave trade … the slave owner would breed his big black to his big woman so that he could have a big black kid.”

It is interesting how we can be so analytical in this society about anything except race. We analyze why someone commits a crime, why a coach made a stupid mistake, why a business fails, etc., but we cannot analyze a seemingly simple fact of life – “Why is the black athlete physically superior?” – without the fear of political Armageddon.

Why then do I feel that The Greek should have been fired? Well from CBS’ point of view, they obviously had no choice. If any public person doesn’t have enough sense to know that you cannot go on camera and analyze why black athletes are superior, they deserve to lose their job. It’s inconceivable that he should be so naïve as to think that it is okay to talk about such things in the public arena.

The main reason The Greek should have been fired is because of his comments about coaching. Frankly this is the only valid reason I can see. Even though he was only being facetious, he perpetuated the idea that somehow a white suffers when a black coach is hired. As he said, “coaching” is the only thing “left for white people”. Therefore, one can deduce that to hire a black coach hurts whites and by not hiring a black coach helps whites. This, in effect, is exercising prejudice against a person who is black. Innocent or not, it could be construed wrongly and justify dismissal.

Unfortunately, we live in a society where common sense rarely prevails over emotional furor. Will we have to spend the rest of our lives scared to death to talk about the black athlete? Recently, on a Kansas City radio show a caller asked “How come almost all defensive linemen are black and almost all offensive linemen are white?” The show’s host – no doubt suddenly starting to become short on breath and sweating at the brow said “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten foot pole.” Here we are in the most sophisticated and open society in the world, but I guess we’re just supposed to believe that the caller’s question cannot be answered by reasonable people. Well, I say “BullJimmy”. I’m not going to be intimidated. In fact, if someone asks me the question, I’ll respond immediately with… “What’s a lineman?”