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Barra smacks around CHFF
Cold, Hard Football Facts for March 3, 2009
Ed. Note: We like to zig when others zag. The rest of the football world is caught up right now in the "Matt Cassel for a second-round draft pick??" curiosity. But it seems we settled the issue three seconds after the trade went down on Saturday: Bill Belichick and the Patriots got hosed.
As usual CHFF was well ahead of the game. So while others rehash the story, we're zagging:
Occasional CHFF contributor, sports writer and friend of the facts Allen Barra took exception to our piece about Attorney General Eric Holder's apocalyptic vision of race that clashes with the reality of race in America. Readers know that our bag is crushing conventional wisdom when we have the evidence in our favor, as we did with the Holder story. He was wrong. CHFF was correct.
Most of the emails we received about the story, which we'll publish in a future Mail Pouch, thought we expressed more eloquently than anyone else a story that needs to be told. But Mr. Barra is free to disagree, even if his disagreements are based upon tired old racial platitudes that the millions of us who live multi-racial, multi-cultural lives dispute by our very existence ... but here's his unedited take.
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As a regular reader of ColdHardFootballFacts.com, I have no objection to your veering off into politics now and then, but I'd appreciate it if you put just a fraction of the thought into your political statements that you do into your football analysis.
Your objections to Attorney General Eric Holder's comments that the United States is "essentially a nation of cowards when it comes to race relations" was both facile and reactionary, and your essential premise that "sports are jut a microcosm of society" is just plain wrong. Sports, especially professional sports, are played essentially by black men in leagues owned by white men – if that's what you mean by microcosm, then you are correct, but it's apparently not what you mean.
You present us with numerous examples – Michael Irvin, Andre Tippett, etc. of players who are happy with their lot in life and have nothing but good things to say about their employers. Good for them, but the National Football League doesn't make a habit of inviting the more disgruntled players to speak – those who perhaps don't see the world, as Irvin and Tippett do, in terms of their own good fortune.
It is true that "The Hall of Fame ceremony puts these rich, complex multi-cultural tapestries of American life on display for all of us to see." It's the job of professional football to put its best PR foot forward, but it's the job of the professional media not to serve as agents for that PR and to show a bit more skepticism about what is being served. In a sport that has produced just a handful of black coaches -- and all of them in just the last couple of years, despite a player roster that is nearly two-thirds black -- there is certainly enough to be skeptical about.
Your assessment of Holder's attitude is both misguided and shortsighted "Holder looks at this work," you write, "and choose instead to focus on the sadness and indignities of the past and not the hope and promise of the future. He sees only walls between the races, and not the gates that swing back and froth with ever-increasing frequency. He chooses to have his view of race relations defined by a small minority of ignorant racists, and not by the great silent majority who lead lives of profound interaction with people of all races, backgrounds, and ethnicities."
It is commendable that the editors of Cold, hard Football Facts hold such an optimistic view on races, and we assume they live what they preach – surely black editors and writers were consulted when this piece was written. But I find it rather dismaying that the famous phrase from the Nixon era – "the great silent majority" is once again summoned up. On precisely what is your "hope and promise of the future" vision based? On a handful of pampered super rich athletes who make speeches at the Hall of Fame?
You insultingly accuse Holder of a view of race relations "defined by a small minority of ignorant racists" – exactly what is your vision defined by? From where, one wonders, do you derive the authority to speak for this great silent majority? And if they are silent, how do you know what their feelings are? Because you all like football? Why do you know more about "people of all races, backgrounds, and ethnicities" than the Attorney General, who, I would venture, has seen a great deal more of American society and the world than you or I. His vision seems shaped by an American society that has currently just one black U.S. Senator and yours by a society that currently has 1130 black professional football players.
I can't help feel that your attitude reinforces Mr. Holder's point that "this nation has still not come to grips with its racial past."
Allen Barra
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