March 19, 1966: The fault lines between American race relations and the sport of basketball intersect in a major way, when a team starting five black players beats a team starting five white ones. March 23, 2011: the fault lines intersect again, when Huffington Post blogger Rob Kirkpatrick wrote his piece “The Racial Biases of Duke Hating.”
Forty-five years ago, Texas Western University coach Don Haskins pitted five black starters against University of Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp’s five white starters.
The resulting 72-65 victory for Texas Western — now the University of Texas at El Paso — supposedly changed the racial makeup of the college game.
Five days ago, Kirkpatrick began his piece by fessing up to being a Duke Blue Devils basketball fan.
“I simply enjoy watching Mike Krzyzewski’s team win year after year by playing disciplined, fundamentally strong basketball, while avoiding the showboating and individual-over-team play, not to mention the NCAA violations, that often mar the college game.”
Fair enough. Kirkpatrick then gave what he feels are the main reasons for Duke hating:
“Duke is to be hated for its success. Duke is to be hated because it’s a private school. … [T]he four-time champions are to be hated because they’re perpetually ‘overrated’ and ‘get all the calls.’ … ”
Kirkpatrick mentions any and every reason but the real one, which he’d know immediately if he lived here in University of Maryland, College Park, country, where we know all about Duke and Duke hating.
Simply put, “It’s the fans, stupid.” Duke University basketball fans bear the distinction of being the most obnoxious in the college game, and that extends back years. They’re even worse than Philadelphia sports fans, and that takes some doing.
So while Kirkpatrick might be clueless about the roots of Duke hating, he hit the mark with his criticism of Jalen Rose.
Twenty years ago, Rose was one of the University of Michigan’s so-called “Fab Five,” a quintet of black freshmen basketball players deemed the best recruiting class in the country.
Even though the group won not one NCAA title — Duke beat ’em in one game, and the University of North Carolina Tar Heels beat ’em in the other — the fame of the “Fab Five” lasts to this day.
ESPN has a documentary about the group, and in that documentary Rose had this to say about Duke:
“I hated Duke and I hated everything I felt Duke stood for. Schools like Duke didn’t recruit players like me. I felt like they only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms.”
Kirkpatrick was — quite rightly — taken aback by Rose’s comment. He no doubt said something like, “What did Jalen Rose just say?” My reaction was similar, but more ethnically specific. I asked, “What did this Negro just say?”
Yes, Jalen “Malcolm X” Rose did say Duke recruited black players who were Uncle Toms. As if that weren’t enough, he chose to elaborate. Duke, Rose charged, recruited “black players from polished families, accomplished families.”
So there we have it: The definition of “Uncle Tom” has been expanded to include any black person from an “accomplished” family, or a “polished” one.
Rose, by his statement, shows there is no further evidence needed to prove that black Americans have overused, misused and abused the term “Uncle Tom.” The term used to mean a black person who was exceedingly servile, obsequious and submissive to whites.
Now, an Uncle Tom is anyone any black person with an attitude and a chip on his or her shoulder calls an Uncle Tom. It’s a dreadful state of affairs our misleaders should address. Don’t wait with bated breath for that to happen.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
