Anyone who has seen the movie Boomerang is familiar with the Martin Lawrence character "Tyler".Tyler always had a theory as to why every action or thought of someone white had to tend towards racism.
His explanation of the game of pool being about - the white ball pushing all of the colored balls around until only the black ball was left. And that the game isn't over until the black ball is off the table.
Yep, it sounds good, even plausible.
But what of other sports?
Are active sports dominated by Blacks because the games are played with big brown balls?
In basketball, the goal of the game is to get the over sized brown ball into the net.
In football, the big brown ball is somewhat deformed. It takes this deformity to enable Peyton Manning or Tom Brady to exert their control.
Is the (mostly) passive sport of baseball a reference to the big brown stick not the little white ball? The pitchers and catchers (whom are usually white) basically try to play a game of Keep Away (from the looming stiff dark bat).
Soccer's ball is both black and white. But the mixed ball just gets kicked around by all races of players in an effort to keep it from entering the extremely wide open white net.
Okay, volleyball has a big white ball. But it's usually considered a woman's (or a wimp's) sport.
And since white women usually play the game, they like to play with big balls too - regardless of color.
Even hockey (with it's small black puck) is a reference to the "shrinkage" that occurs on ice. And the goal of the game is to prevent the black puck from going into the wide white net (Blond hairs?). They even station a large white guy in front of the net to prevent the emasculated black puck from entering this goal. It's the only sport that allows fighting to prevent such a thing from happening.
How true are these observations?
John Quinones and his "What Would You Do" series is a series of social "experiments".But are they true experiments?
( http://stuffwhitepeopledo.blogspot.com/2009/03/ignore-or-stand-up-to-racism.html )
There are other factors that were not accounted for. Where were the controls?
What about the fact that the woman could be seen as holding her own with the saleslady? Would you help the person who is winning a fight?
Would the people have helped a white patron if referred to as "you people"? Maybe they were just passive people doing what they would have done in any situation.
Would the people have responded differently if the Black woman had engaged in a bit of small talk with the other patrons. One woman said that she didn't help because "(she) didn't know (the Black woman)".
Would people have helped as long as the Black woman didn't bring up race? One guy asked if the Black actor "played the Race card".
The fact that the Black guy was offended (even when it was pointed out that the reason had more to do with the Black actor being seen as from a lower class) makes this a class issue (not race). The issue of race was only projected onto the Black actor by the Black patron.
So all this "experiment" showed was that if you're always looking for racism - you'll surely find it. Not everything concerning people of color is Racist.
IMO -In the case of the football player getting a ticket for running a red light while trying to see his dying mother in law is more of a case of an asshole cop trying to show his need for a citizen's recognition of his authority (as was the case with the pregnant white woman last year in another state). This case was one of a larger set of problems with many police officers.
http://www.aclutx.org/projects/racialprofiling.php
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