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The Sports World’s New “King James:” He’s From Gouyave!

The Editors — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 14:11:01 +0000

By Kasha Dragon
The track and field world championships are over. The athletes, medals in hand or not, have packed up and left the heretofore little-known South Korean city of Daegu and scattered to their homes all over the globe.
Most of the world has moved on.
But in Grenada, one of the world’s smallest island nations and in one of its smallest communities, the fishing village of Gouyave, on its west coast, there’re still celebrating the less-than-45 seconds it took to put them on the map of the track and field universe.

In it to Win it: At Age 12, Justus Rules the Boards

The Editors — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 01:24:01 +0000

By TaRessa Stovall
The 12-year-old Bronx resident may be shy and soft-spoken, but his fierce drive and unwavering confidence are earning him celebrity status in a sport not often associated with urban youth. He earns top grades, loves math, obeys his parents, avoids junk food and oh yeah, is the youngest black chess player ever to reach the level of master.

In the world.

Baseball and Race: America’s Game – America’s Continuing Struggle

The Editors — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:40:09 +0000

By Lee A. Daniels
They’ve discovered – again – that baseball really is just like America.
That’s the meaning I took from Thursday’s New York Times story pointing out glaring racial disparity in the game between the positions of first-base and third-base coach. At the first-base position, twenty of the thirty coaches are of African-American, Latino-American or Asian descent. Of the thirty third-base coaches, twenty-three are white, three are black and four are Latino.

The Trials of Caster Semenya

The Editors — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:01:49 +0000

By Pamela Scully On July 6, 2010, nearly a year after the first public questions were raised about her gender, the IAAF stated that it had determined that Semenya, is female, and can now compete in local and international competitions.

Facing Fears: Many Minorities Need Encouragement to Get in the Swim

The Editors — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:02:40 +0000

By Tarice L.S. Gray While at a swim meet two weeks ago in Canada, World Record Holder and 2008 US Olympic Swimmer Cullen Jones got some heartbreaking news: Another child of color had drowned in his United States.

11 Things I Learned Watching the World Cup

The Editors — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:40:42 +0000

By Mark Lassiter If you are stubbornly resisting the temptation to watch, or thinking about attending a viewing party with a group of total strangers who are living and dying with every goal, here are eleven tips from someone who dares you to hold your breath and say the word "goal!!!" for as long as you can hold it.

One on One: Barack Obama vs. Scott Brown, In the Gym

The Editors — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:32:14 +0000

By Mark Lassiter
If Scott "Downtown" Brown and "The Big O" (with a sincere apology to Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson) consider practicing for their charity game together, they cannot violate party boundaries or be seen in public. Their clandestine practice session would sound something like this.

Who Dat? Walking to New Orleans

The Editors — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:38:42 +0000

By Mark Lassiter
New Orleans radio announcer, Bernard "Buddy D" Dilberto, fueled a grass roots, populist movement in 1980. He implored frustrated football fans to attend games with brown paper grocery bags on their heads to protest the performance of the 0-14 hometown Saints. Buddy also said, "When you go to Heaven after you die, tell St. Peter you're a Saints fan. He'll say c'mon in, I don't care what else you done, you suffered enough."

Is Tiger Woods African American? Of course not.

The Editors — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:56:31 +0000

By Janet Singleton In my mind Tiger Woods is a multiethnic, polysyllabic, whatjamacallit, just as he said. “A Cablinasian.” He called himself that in a 1997 appearance on Oprah and disappointed some black people. But I have no problem with that, particularly now. It’s just that the controversial Vanity Fair magazine cover posing Tiger as “thuggish” and therefore presumably blacker, we are invited to consider that issue once again.

Home Alone: Tiger and Today’s ‘Mad Men’

The Editors — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:44:40 +0000

By Mark Lassiter In September, Forbes announced that Tiger Woods had become the first athlete to earn one billion dollars over the course of his career. Now, just two months later, and approximately forty years after the setting for Mad Men, real life advertising executives at Nike, EA Sports, Gillette, Gatorade and AT&T have been carefully monitoring the sagging ratings for the soap opera being played in the national media with their superstar pitchman, Tiger Woods, in the role of leading man.

Two-Sided Victory: Caster Semenya to Keep Gold Medal, Gender Test Results to be Confidential

The Editors — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:41:00 +0000

By TaRessa Stovall In a victory not only for a gifted athlete, but for humanity as a whole, Caster Semenya, the gifted South African teen track star who was mired in controversy over confusion about her gender, was found “innocent of any wrong” doing by the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and allowed to retain her 800m gold medal, title and prize money.

Any Given Sunday: Rush Limbaugh and the NFL

The Editors — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:50:46 +0000

By Mark Lassiter The National Football League (NFL) seems to be getting along quite well without recent almost-team-part-owner Rush Limbaugh. That blip came and went pretty quickly, but it’s still worth looking at, both as an example of how politics and race can play out on and off the field, and as an examination of sports as sanctuary.