So here, the Cincy sports world is still talking about Saturday’s UC-Xavier men’s basket-brawl game at the annual Crosstown Shootout on Saturday, but the issue of race and college sports, especially in basketball, is often overlooked. ESPN’s Myron Medcalf had the same reaction I did to the story: would the reaction of the college b-ball press and Hamilton County prosecutors have been the same if the athletes who did this were white?
As a 28-year-old African-American, I’m concerned about the backlash that will outlive the incident. Xavier and Cincinnati fed negative stereotypes about the violent nature of young black men that will last long after players serve their suspensions.
They’re not true. Most young black men aren’t violent. But Saturday’s incident and others like it provide ample evidence for those who disagree.
Check the message boards.
Predictably, plenty have feasted on the viral violence involving multiple young black men.
After Cincinnati officials announced the six-game suspension for Yancy Gates on Sunday, I tweeted, “I figured 10 minimum for Gates. 6?”
Here’s how one of my followers responded: “Only six? That’s pretty soft for a gang beating.”
Too often, the negative behaviors of young black men — more than other groups — are tied to their race. Their actions are sometimes viewed as cultural, instead of individual.
Medcalf rightfully goes on to say that as college athletes who have been given an incredible gift and the opportunity to use it to better themselves, that they are being held to a higher standard because of the number of folks out there fully vested in seeing black men fail, and that’s basically been the case for a very, very long time.
That in no way excuses their actions. In fact, it makes Fox Sports Ohio writer Zac Jackson railing against the stiff suspensions given out to several players by both coaches and calling the suspensions “soft” not only totally predictable but nearly impossible to counter without bringing up race, and in a situation like this that’s simply going to be a losing argument.
It’s an unfortunate reality, made all the more real by our country’s current political tensions. Cooler heads should have prevailed. They did not. Maybe I am overly sensitive being a pretty big black man myself. My father cured me of my temper in youth by sitting me down and explaining to me that as big as I was, if I ever really hurt anyone in anger, that I would not be shown leniency in any way by the system in North Carolina. I had to be better than that, not for his sake, but for my own.
You’re just not allowed to show anger like that as a black man in America. And the reactions to this fight highlight exactly why. It’s a lesson that has much wider applications for our political times, but that’s an argument for a different night.
That was my 1st thought when I heard on ESPN that the prosecutor was considering charges. The teams, the schools, and the conferences should absolutely mete out discipline. But I seriously doubt the DA would be threatening charges if these were white kids. (just the opinion of this middle age white male…
Thanks for posting this. Zandar,i believe you live in Kentucky, so you may know something about Cincinnati depending on where you’re living. I’m a professor at a UC campus, though not the main one with the basketball team. My husband and I were watching the game and were pretty horrified by what happened there, and exactly as you say, how it plays into stereotypes. Tu Holloway probably should not have said afterwards that he and his teammates were gangsters, for example, though I get it that he is young guy who was seriously pissed off. To add a Cincinnati-specific piece to it, this is a very uptight, tsk-tsk kind of city, at least among the white people (of which I am one), and there is a perception that the neighborhoods that separate UC and Xavier are gang-infested and dangerous. They are only four and a half miles apart, but very different places in many ways. UC is a state school, much larger, and more diverse; Xavier is private, Catholic and more white. I don’t know how that played into what happened, but as a longtime resident of this area, it feels to me that it did, that despite the fact that most of the players involved were African-American, some of the differences in the way the schools are seen and how they are portrayed no doubt fed into these guys’ animosity to each other. There’s such an old ethnic tension in so many Midwestern cities between white, ethnic Catholics and African Americans that I can’t help but see that at least adding fuel to the flames. I grew up just outside Detroit, where the same dynamic existed when I was growing up. Anyway, just a view from on the ground.
I find it interesting that Medcalf’s entire column is based on his own stereotypes against people who have stereotypes against black people. Racism obviously does exist, but just because one black person does something stupid doesn’t mean you should validate one racist Tweet or one “thug” comment as the general reaction to the fight. My response was, “Whoa. Ouch.” Sport is emotional. Guys fight.