The Loving Story

A racially-charged criminal trial and a heart-rending love story converge in the history of Richard and Mildred Loving. Their struggle for respect and dignity is set against a backdrop of historic anti-miscegenation sentiments in the United States. With the help of two young, ambitious lawyers driven to pave the way for social justice and equal rights through a historic Supreme Court case, "Loving v. Virginia" overturned lingering bans on interracial marriage in sixteen states.

Told through never-before-seen cinema verité footage of the Lovings and their lawyers, with other authentic footage of the times. Together with oral accounts and interviews with their family and friends, the film captures their saga – from their courtship, to their arrest and exile, to their preparation for the 1967 Supreme Court case.

THE LOVING STORY is a journey into a poignant love story set against the turbulent backdrop of race relations in America. It was the turning point for marriage equality in the United States; the premiere will be in early 2011, and interested supporters can be a part of the final production phase.

Thomas Hayes is an entrepreneur, journalist, political strategist, and photographer who recently worked as the Campaign Manager on the Madore For Congress campaign in Minnesota's 2nd District. He contributes regularly to a host of other web sites on topics ranging from economics and politics to culture and community.

Racism: The Mental Illness I Will Not Stop Talking About

What's interesting about the Internet are the different audiences and their responses and characteristics, especially on the issue of race and racism, a problem that is on the constant collective mind of the African American community and people of color in general because historically we've been the most negatively impacted by it.

I don't claim to be the spokesperson for the Black community and such a designation would be the stuff of comedy. But what does vex me and really egg me on to continue to raise the issue of race and racism is the number of racist acts that are "done" in society, how some would have us believe society is colorblind, and those who try to stop me from talking or writing about race.

Those who speak of being "colorblind" are the stuff of humor to me, and do so only in the matter of talking about how people are judged by their skin color, which means they do see color, otherwise they would remain silent. The fact is, everyone makes a determination of how they will treat someone based in part on their skin color. What's unfortunate are those who want to silence people like me. I call them the "people under the stairs" who don't want to be seen and don't want you to be heard especially if you dare talk about race.

This point of view is particularly evident at SFGate.com and it's not the fault of the editors or the managers, but the particular brand of commenter -- nasty -- that's active. Some commenters believe I'm supposed to be a "journalist" who gives both sides of a story but I've noticed they only make that claim when I write something they don't like. My raison d'etre is to give an opinion, have a pulse, and shake you up, hopefully to cause you to do something to change the World around you in a good way.

That's why shining a light on racism is so important.

Much of racism today is institutional. In other words there are common habits in society that you are used to and don't question, but many people of color are harmed by in some way. Some of those institutional actions are, for example, how a movie star is created by an entertainment and public relations consortium. (Zac Efron) Other institutional actions include assuming someone of color may be a bad or corrupt politician even if that person has a stellar record. It has also been a factor in how students are graded by teachers. I can go on and on.

Racism is a mental illness that must be curbed. It's judged as such by some like Dr. Alvin F Poussaint, who state's that for one to (my example) risk their own job as a waiter by the act of throwing a plate at a Black person because the waiter hates Blacks indicates the presence of a mental illness. Because the question is how far will that person go?

Society will not change if we sweep this issue under the rug. Race and Racism is to be talked about, not ignored. That - in part - is what I'm here for. I will not stop writing or talking about race or racism and I will not be silenced. But I will listen to the voices of those who disagree, as long as they do it agreeably.

Do Black Women Support Black Female / White Male Relationships But Not Black Male / White Female?

More at Racialious: “Most Black women who I am close with approve of, and even cheer on, a Black female/White male interracial relationship. But one that’s the other way around evokes a feeling far less warm and fuzzy. For example, if Obama had been married to a White woman… eek. I’m sure we wouldn’t have been as quick to embrace him (and actually, I’ve talked with men and women of every color about this hypothetical situation, all of whom expressed a similar “cringe” - perhaps a topic for a different post).”

-- A great column. As one who's dated inter-colorially (I hate the term race) since I started dating, I predicted this years ago. What bothers me is that television shows more Black female / White Male pairing than for Black male / White female. Why? These images impact social development.

L.A. can use race as factor in magnet schools

More at SFGate: “(12-21) 17:43 PST -- Los Angeles can continue to seek racial balance in assigning tens of thousands of students to specialized magnet schools despite California's voter-approved ban on race preferences in government programs, a state appeals court has ruled.

Friday's decision by the Second District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles preserves the long-standing desegregation program in the state's largest school district in the face of a challenge by backers of Proposition 209, the 1996 ballot measure. Lawyers in the case disagreed on whether the ruling could also affect a lawsuit against the use of race in Berkeley school enrollments.”

TonyaTko's Sad About The State Of Race; I'm Not

I just read TonyaTko's blog where she's sad about the state of race. I think what she's talking about is racial self-hatred, and I do agree that it does seem to be alive and well. But I'm hopeful in that it's not as widespread in my experience and I feel that digital media can play a role in repairing the problem.

Getting down to brass tacks on the Hope front

Getting down to brass tacks on the Hope front
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about relationships. She is a white woman married to a white man. I am a white woman married to a half Philippino man who looks more, say, Samoan. I have never considered myself to part of a "mixed race" marriage, though I suppose that, technically, I am. I can tell you flat out that we have never seen any discrimination and our children, who both look plain ol' white, have never faced any, either.

I have been in relationships, however, where this wasn't the case. I have, in my lifetime, had relationships with two black men. In the first, he was much more open about the relationship than I. I come from a Southern family and we were living in Virginia and while I wasn't embarassed to be with him, per se, I was fearful of people's reactions. I was afraid to hold hands in public. He would laugh at me, but was patient.

In the second relationship, about five years later, I was the one who was more confident. Granted, we were living in the nineties instead of the eighties and I had worked this ground before. But we were still in Virginia and let me assure you that it was not universally OK.

My friend and I started talking about these relationships because she had come across an article from The Dallas Morning News talking about Barack Obama as the "symbol of acceptance" for some mixed-race couples. It's old news by now that Sen. Obama is, himself, the product of a white mother and a Kenyan father. If I thought that my relationships faced discrimination in the eighties and nineties, that was child's play compared to what Obama's parents must have faced in the early sixties.

To be sure, that discrimination has not passed entirely. And interractial couples are keenly aware of that. They are also keenly aware of the issues that their children, who grow up with the same identity issues Obama discussed in his books, face and the discrimination they can face from both races.

When my husband, the product of a white father and a Philippina mother, was a child, he found himself first not white enough for his classmates in Wilmington, DE, and then not black enough for his classmates in urban Pittsburgh. When Obama used this same language in his speech on race on March 18 of this year, he was speaking directly to my husband and the millions like him in this country who have been straddling the racial divide their whole lives.

In the midst of the policy talk and the endorsements and the super delegate count, some of the more powerful and simpler messages of Obama's candidacy can get lost. And some of them aren't even about what he has to say. Some of them are simply about who he is. He is a singular candidate, symbolizing, with his person, a message of Hope to millions in this country about what is possible for their lives. This isn't high brow talk about economic policy that, let's be honest, leaves most people glassy eyed. This is the Hope that tells millions of Americans that it's OK to be who they are. And it tells millions of others that it's OK to let those people be who they are.

Discrimination, in this country or any other, won't go away. We can never be so polyanna to think that human beings will ever lose the capacity for hate. But we've come a long way and Obama is helping us go farther faster than we might have thought possible.

Taylor Marsh and MSNBC Misquote Barack Obama

Sometimes there are people who are so busy looking for smoking guns they see ghosts. Taylor Marsh is one of those people. Taylor Marsh is so upset that Hillary Clinton will lose to Barack Obama that she stoops to misquoting Senator Obama.

Barack appeared on a popular radio show called "Angelo Cataldi"

If you see the show's website , it glowingly praises Senator Obama, writing:

Philadelphia's Angelo Cataldi interviewed Barack Obama this morning on Philadelphia's Sports Radio, WIP-AM 610.

Cataldi, a wildly popular sports personality in Philadelphia, did a great interview, which you can listen to here. According to local listener Eric Schmeltzer:

Cataldi and his crew were raving about Obama for two hours after his interview was done. Guys were calling in saying they didn't know who they were going to vote for, until Obama called in, and that cinched it for them. Cataldi was saying he's going to do everything to elect him, and was getting his tux ready for the inaugural ball.

Another Philadelphia talk radio host, Michael Smerconish, who was in the audience for Obama's speech, had nothing but glowing praise for it and its message when he appeared on the the Today Show this morning. Smerconish's praise was notable, because his radio show caters to a right wing audience. Since appearing on the Today Show, Smerconish's listeners apparently have driven him to couch his praise of Obama. But its really too late now, as he's already spoken. It looks like even right wing radio talk show hosts like Obama!

One of the questions posed by Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball was how he was going to get the regular beer drinking guys working day jobs to vote for him.

Obama seems to be doing just fine in this area. It looks like a pretty good move on his part to go on Sports Radio, especially for a guy that has some other moves of his own like this left handed layup.....

But Taylor Marsh can't stand that, so she prints this misquote of what Senator Obama said on the interview:

The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is a typical white person who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know there's a reaction that's been been bred into our experiences that don't go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that's just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it..."

But that's not exactly what he said. Obama said this:

"The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn't. But she is the typical White person, who uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know. You know, There's a reaction that it's been bread into our experiences that don't go away and sometimes come out in the wrong way, and that's just the nature of race in our society we have to break through it. And what makes me optimistic is you see each generation being a little less like that, and that's powerful stuff"

The radio host didn't flinch at that, and gave Obama a glowing review.

Maybe some people aren't ready for straight talk about race. It seems Taylor Marsh is not.

On CNN, Jennifer Donahue Blasts Hillary Clinton For Playing "Race Card" On Obama; Clinton Advisor David Gergen Can't Stand Truth

Jennifer Donahue, who's a political pundit and Senior Advisor for Political Affairs at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics, gets my award for a major act of courage.

Thursday night, on CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Jennifer Donahue blasted the Hillary Clinton campaign for using the race card against Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential Race. She was on the show with Cooper, Clinton Advisor and Political Consultant David Gergen, and CNN contributor Jeffrey Toobin. Whereas Toobin and Gergen were circumspect in their way of addressing the matter, Donahue was right on.

This seemed to rankle Gergen.

Gergen tried to hide his anger at the mere mention of race and Clinton campaign strategy, but he's angry because deep down he knows they've taken a path of trying to "Willie Horton" Barack Obama. Look, Gergen's a Clinton Advisor -- something Anderson Cooper didn't mention -- and this is the second time in as many weeks he's tried to protect or soften a person's attack of a Clinton campaign tactic, beit Carl Bernstein who claimed the Clinton's were being desperate, or now.

Gergen's openly using the CNN platform to help Hillary Clinton's campaign for president. Thus, he's fair game to be denounced.

The simple fact is that with the Clinton Campaign having both volunteers and paid campaign staffers who worked to launch a race-based smear campaign against Obama, starting with planting the idea that he's Muslim -- a total lie -- they have indeed played the "race card" and Gergen knows it.

For Gergen to argue otherwise is in itself advancing a lie. For CNN to allow Gergen to do this without revealing that he's a Clinton operative is just aiding and abetting the advance of the same lie.

I noticed that no one bothered to claim that Hillary Clinton was playing the "sex card" when she said the "boys were ganging up" on her.

Geez. David, you should know -- indeed, you do know -- that people make some views of others based on racial stereotypes and that the Clintons have been playing to those stereotypes.

To the woodshed with Gergen! His assertions to the contrary are an outrage! Thankfully, the main stream media, like the Washington Post , is picking up on this terrible approach.

NBA Officials Call Fouls On Black Players More Than White Players - NY Times

This is a terrible revelation, but logical considering the nature of prejudice.

May 2, 2007
Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls

By ALAN SCHWARZ
An academic study of the National Basketball Association, whose playoffs continue tonight, suggests that a racial bias found in other parts of American society has existed on the basketball court as well.

A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell University graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991 through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players.

Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics, found a corresponding bias in which black officials called fouls more frequently against white players, though that tendency was not as strong. They went on to claim that the different rates at which fouls are called “is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew assigned to the game.”

N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern said in a telephone interview that the league saw a draft copy of the paper last year, and was moved to do its own study this March using its own database of foul calls, which specifies which official called which foul.

“We think our cut at the data is more powerful, more robust, and demonstrates that there is no bias,” Mr. Stern said.

Three independent experts asked by The Times to examine the Wolfers-Price paper and materials released by the N.B.A. said they considered the Wolfers-Price argument far more sound. The N.B.A. denied a request for its underlying data, even with names of officials and players removed, because it feared that the league’s confidentiality agreement with referees could be violated if the identities were determined through box scores.

The paper by Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price has yet to undergo formal peer review before publication in an economic journal, but several prominent academic economists said it would contribute to the growing literature regarding subconscious racism in the workplace and elsewhere, such as in searches by the police.

The three experts who examined the Wolfers-Price paper and the N.B.A.’s materials were Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, the author of “Pervasive Prejudice?” and an expert in testing for how subtle racial bias, also known as implicit association, appears in interactions ranging from the setting of bail amounts to the tipping of taxi drivers; David Berri of California State University-Bakersfield, the author of “The Wages of Wins,” which analyzes sports issues using statistics; and Larry Katz of Harvard University, the senior editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

“I would be more surprised if it didn’t exist,” Mr. Ayres said of an implicit association bias in the N.B.A. “There’s a growing consensus that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by unconscious, or subconscious, attitudes. When you force people to make snap decisions, they often can’t keep themselves from subconsciously treating blacks different than whites, men different from women.”

Mr. Berri added: “It’s not about basketball — it’s about what happens in the world. This is just the nature of decision-making, and when you have an evaluation team that’s so different from those being evaluated. Given that your league is mostly African-American, maybe you should have more African-American referees — for the same reason that you don’t want mostly white police forces in primarily black neighborhoods.”

To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores. They accounted for factors like the players’ positions, playing time and All-Star status; each group’s time on the court (black players played 83 percent of minutes, while 68 percent of officials were white); calls at home games and on the road; and other relevant data.

But they said they continued to find the same phenomenon: that players who were similar in all ways except skin color drew foul calls at a rate difference of up to 4 ½ percent depending on the racial composition of an N.B.A. game’s three-person referee crew.

Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a vocal critic of his league’s officiating, said in a telephone interview after reading the paper: “We’re all human. We all have our own prejudice. That’s the point of doing statistical analysis. It bears it out in this application, as in a thousand others.”

Asked if he had ever suspected any racial bias among officials before reading the study, Mr. Cuban said, “No comment.”

Two veteran players who are African-American, Mike James of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Alan Henderson of the Philadelphia 76ers, each said that they did not think black or white officials had treated them differently.

“If that’s going on, then it’s something that needs to be dealt with,” James said. “But I’ve never seen it.”

Two African-American coaches, Doc Rivers of the Boston Celtics and Maurice Cheeks of the Philadelphia 76ers, declined to comment on the paper’s claims. Rod Thorn, the president of the New Jersey Nets and formerly the N.B.A.’s executive vice president for basketball operations, said: “I don’t believe it. I think officials get the vast majority of calls right. They don’t get them all right. The vast majority of our players are black.”

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price spend 41 pages accounting for such population disparities and more than a dozen other complicating factors.

For the 1991-92 through 2003-4 seasons, the authors analyzed every player’s box-score performance — minutes played, rebounds, shots made and missed, fouls and the like — in the context of the racial composition of the three-person crew refereeing that game. (The N.B.A. did not release its record of calls by specific officials to either Mr. Wolfers, Mr. Price or The Times, claiming it is kept for referee training purposes only.)

Mr. Wolfers said that he and Mr. Price classified each N.B.A. player and referee as either black or not black by assessing photographs and speaking with an anonymous former referee, and then using that information to predict how an official would view the player. About a dozen players could reasonably be placed in either category, but Mr. Wolfers said the classification of those players did not materially change the study’s findings.

During the 13-season period studied, black players played 83 percent of the minutes on the floor. With 68 percent of officials being white, three-person crews were either entirely white (30 percent of the time), had two white officials (47 percent), had two black officials (20 percent) or were entirely black (3 percent).

Mr. Stern said that the race of referees had never been considered when assembling crews for games.

With their database of almost 600,000 foul calls, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price used a common statistical technique called multivariable regression analysis, which can identify correlations between different variables. The economists accounted for a wide range of factors: that centers, who tend to draw more fouls, were disproportionately white; that veteran players and All-Stars tended to draw foul calls at different rates than rookies and non-stars; whether the players were at home or on the road, as officials can be influenced by crowd noise; particular coaches on the sidelines; the players’ assertiveness on the court, as defined by their established rates of assists, steals, turnovers and other statistics; and more subtle factors like how some substitute players enter games specifically to commit fouls.

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined whether otherwise similar black and white players had fouls-per-minute rates that varied with the racial makeup of the refereeing crew.

“Across all of these specifications,” they write, “we find that black players receive around 0.12-0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played (an increase of 2 ½-4 ½ percent) when the number of white referees officiating a game increases from zero to three.”

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price also report a statistically significant correlation with decreases in points, rebounds and assists, and a rise in turnovers, when players performed before primarily opposite-race officials.

“Player-performance appears to deteriorate at every margin when officiated by a larger fraction of opposite-race referees,” they write. The paper later notes no change in free-throw percentage. “We emphasize this result because this is the one on-court behavior that we expect to be unaffected by referee behavior.”

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to affect game outcomes. Their results suggested that for each additional black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team’s chance of winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and so on, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years won 48.6 percent of games — a difference of about two victories in an 82-game season.

“Basically, it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters white, you’d win a few more games,” Mr. Wolfers said.

The N.B.A.’s reciprocal study was conducted by the Segal Company, the actuarial consulting firm which designed the in-house data-collection system the league uses to identify patterns for referee-training purposes, to test for evidence of bias. The league’s study was less formal and detailed than an academic paper, included foul calls for only two and a half seasons (from November 2004 through January 2007), and did not consider differences among players by position, veteran status and the like. But it did have the clear advantage of specifying which of the three referees blew his whistle on each foul.

The N.B.A. study reported no significant differences in how often white and black referees collectively called fouls on white and black players. Mr. Stern said he was therefore convinced “that there’s no demonstration of any bias here — based upon more robust and more data that was available to us because we keep that data.”

Added Joel Litvin, the league’s president for basketball operations, “I think the analysis that we did can stand on its own, so I don’t think our view of some of the things in Wolfers’s paper and some questions we have actually matter as much as the analysis we did.”

Mr. Litvin explained the N.B.A.’s refusal to release its underlying data for independent examination by saying: “Even our teams don’t know the data we collect as to a particular referee’s call tendencies on certain types of calls. There are good reasons for this. It’s proprietary. It’s personnel data at the end of the day.”

The percentage of black officials in the N.B.A. has increased in the past several years, to 38 percent of 60 officials this season from 34 percent of 58 officials two years ago. Mr. Stern and Mr. Litvin said that the rise was coincidental because the league does not consider race in the hiring process.

Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price are scheduled to present their paper at the annual meetings of the Society of Labor Economists on Friday and the American Law and Economics Association on Sunday. They will then submit it to the National Bureau of Economic Research and for formal peer review before consideration by an economic journal.

Both men cautioned that the racial discrimination they claim to have found should be interpreted in the context of bias found in other parts of American society.

“There’s bias on the basketball court,” Mr. Wolfers said, “but less than when you’re trying to hail a cab at midnight.”

Pat Borzi contributed reporting from Minneapolis and John Eligon from East Rutherford, N.J.

ESPN's Michael Smith Praises Pittsburgh Steelers Process Toward Hiring Mike Tomlin

This is far better than what the Oakland Raiders have done in hiring Lane Kiffin.

Search shows Steelers know what they're doing

By Michael Smith
ESPN.com
Archive

In the immortal words of Rakim, this is how it should be done.

The diligence with which Steelers' ownership approached their nearly two-week search for Bill Cowher's replacement serves as a textbook example of what the NFL had in mind when it established the Rooney Rule (named after Pittsburgh owner Dan Rooney, it requires teams to interview at least one minority head coach candidate.)

The policy seeks to promote a fair, inclusive and thorough process.

Which "Race/Ethnicity" box the coach checked on his application is irrelevant.

The Steelers believe former Vikings defensive coordinator Mike Tomlin to be the best man to lead one of the league's flagship franchises.

Tomlin just so happens to be African-American.


Kirby Lee/WireImage.com
Mike Tomlin, left, leaves Brad Childress and the Vikings to take over the Steelers.
From the looks of it, Rooney and team president Art Rooney II started the selection process with a clean slate. Meaning it wasn't Coach X's job to lose, though many believed the Steelers ultimately would promote former offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt or assistant head coach/offensive line coach Russ Grimm. The Rooneys didn't go for broke in a hurried pursuit of a big-name college coach. They didn't conduct courtesy interviews with members of the majority or token interviews with minorities.

No side or backdoor deals, no circumventing. It was all legit. In fact, in the end the leading candidates were minorities -- Tomlin and Bears defensive coordinator Ron Rivera, who is Hispanic.

And while it is indeed fitting that Dan Rooney, who has been at the forefront of the league's movement to increase minority hiring, did his part to raise the number of active black coaches (to six), Rooney's obligation was not to make a social statement but to make the best decision for the franchise.

Coincidentally, the best choice is the first black coach in team history.

Super Bowl XLI will feature the first two black head coaches in the game's history. It's not as though black men only now figured out what it takes to be championship coaches. The more opportunities, the more likely a minority head coach leading a team to the title game becomes commonplace. Tomlin didn't sit before the Rooneys as a means of compliance, having no shot to begin with, as so often seems to be the case. It was an open competition and he had a real opportunity -- the only thing minority coaches want given to them.

For a change, a minority didn't have to be twice as qualified from a résumé standpoint to land the gig. The 34-year-old Tomlin spent five seasons as Tampa Bay's secondary coach and this past season overseeing Minnesota's defense. But what he lacks in experience Tomlin more than makes up for, according to those who know him, in charisma, football knowledge and the ability to get players young and old to buy into what he's selling.

Also, give the Steelers credit for focusing on the big picture rather than the short term. No one would have blamed the Rooneys for promoting from within in an attempt to maintain continuity on a team one season removed from its fifth championship. Or even for hiring an offensive coach or one whose preferred defensive scheme is better-suited to their current personnel. (Tomlin comes from the Tampa 2 coaching tree. The Steelers have run the 3-4 since the early 1980s.) Whereas other teams often select a head coach with one unit or even a few players a mind, Pittsburgh chose whom it believes to be the best leader.

Interestingly, an organization that has changed so little in the past -- Tomlin is the team's third coach in the past 38 seasons -- ignored the potential sweeping changes and instead focused on Tomlin's potential.

Clearly the Rooneys were thinking more about the next two decades rather than the next two years. And Tomlin, who becomes the league's youngest head coach, certainly will grow into the job.

He looks nothing like either Cowher or Chuck Noll, but the Rooneys see the same profile in Tomlin. Pittsburgh changes coaches about as often as the Catholic Church elects a pope, so it has some idea what it's doing in this department. The Steelers tend to do things the right way, and the exhaustive process that led them to Tomlin is no exception.

Michael Smith is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

Colts Tony Dungy, Bears Lovie Smith Can Be First Black coaches In Super Bowl

I hope this happens, as it would pave the way for major changes in society and for the better. Kids need to see this. They need to know they have a chance. Other kids, not Black, need to see that Blacks can lead on a national stage.

Dungy, Smith have chance to be first black coaches in Super Bowl
DAVE GOLDBERG
Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS - Two weeks ago, Lovie Smith made the three-hour trip from Chicago to watch Tony Dungy's Colts take on Herman Edwards' Chiefs in a first-round NFL playoff game.



The night before, the three old friends and their wives dined at P.F. Chang's in downtown Indianapolis in what was as much a symbolic meeting as a gathering of old pals - three black coaches celebrating the arrival of their teams in the NFL playoffs.

"We talked about starting in '96 in Tampa and some of the things we remembered from then," Dungy recalled on Thursday. "How great it is that we are in the playoffs and that at least two of us have a chance to make it to the Super Bowl. You realized it would be awesome if it happened and, hopefully, it will."

It's officially one game from being awesome.

If the Colts beat the New England Patriots on Sunday and Smith's Bears beat the New Orleans Saints, it would put two black coaches in the NFL's marquee game for the first time in its 41 years. Even if just one of them wins, that, too, would be a first.

There were just three black head coaches in the NFL when Dungy started nearly a decade ago in Tampa, with Edwards and Smith on his staff. Back then, 70 percent of the league's players were black - a percentage that still holds.

This year, there were seven black coaches, including Dennis Green in Arizona and Art Shell in Oakland. Both men were fired after the season, although Shell will remain in the Raiders' front office. The others are Cincinnati's Marvin Lewis and Cleveland's Romeo Crennel.

Though he didn't coach this season, Ray Rhodes coached Philadelphia and Green Bay in the 1990s.

Despite the strides, no black head coach has ever taken the final step.

"Of course, it would be special if that happened," Smith said. "I hope for a day when it is unnoticed but that day isn't here. This is the first time, I think, two black men have led their teams to the final four. You have to acknowledge that. I do, we do. I realize the responsibility that comes with that."

So do black players.

"We're making progress slowly," says defensive tackle Anthony McFarland of the Colts, who played for both Dungy and Smith in Tampa Bay.

"I don't think players think of 'black players' and 'white players.' It shows that for Tony and Lovie to come this far that there are at least some organizations that have confidence that black men can be head coaches. I hope it goes beyond that so we don't have to think of their race," he said.

NFL leaders acknowledge that's in the future.

"We still have problems with the front office," said Pittsburgh's Dan Rooney, one of league's senior owners.

An example: When Jerry Reese was promoted to general manager of the New York Giants this week, he became just the third black man in that key position, joining Baltimore's Ozzie Newsome and Houston's Rick Smith.

The push for diversity actually came from outside the NFL five years ago.

Two lawyers, the late Johnny Cochran Jr. and Cyrus Mehri, released a study criticizing the league for ignoring black candidates for head coaching jobs.

Then-commissioner Paul Tagliabue, a staunch advocate of minority hiring, quickly appointed a committee headed by Rooney to study the problem.

From that emerged "the Rooney rule," requiring any team with a coaching vacancy to interview at least one minority candidate before making a decision. Rooney himself is currently considering Minnesota defensive coordinator Mike Tomlin, who is black, and Chicago assistant Ron Rivera, who is Hispanic, for his team's coaching vacancy.

That rule was a huge step forward.

As recently as 1987, when 200 league and team officials convened for their annual March meeting, there was just one black person among them. Two years later, Shell became the first black head coach of the modern era - there hadn't been one since Fritz Pollard in the barnstorming days of the early 1920s.

Few remember Pollard, although Dungy acknowledged him Thursday as "the Jackie Robinson of pro football."

Another positive sign: Some black coaches who have left their original teams have been hired again. Dungy, Shell and Rhodes all got second jobs after being fired, and Green and Edwards (who was with the New York Jets from 2001-2005) voluntarily left one team and were hired by another.

"That the black coaches are being fired and rehired show that they are becoming part of the system now - they're inside the 'old boy network' instead of out of it," Rooney said. "I don't think people look at their race but just that they're just good coaches. It's a big step from where we were."

Still, the NFL's numbers aren't close to the NBA's, another league with a large majority of black players. It currently has 11 black coaches for 30 teams, and there have been 56 in its history.

The NFL started a minority intern program nearly two decades ago for players and college coaches. It, in turn, has brought dozens of black assistant coaches into the league.

But a year ago, when there were nine vacancies, only Shell, who had been working in the league office, was hired.

It's no wonder they end up rooting for each other to succeed.

"Of course, Tony is a good friend," Smith said. "I'm a big Colts fan since they are on the AFC side of the football. But not if we play them in the Super Bowl."

"I Have A Dream" - The Full Video Speech Of Martin Luther King

This proves the amazing value of YouTube and other video distribution systems. We now have history right at our fingertips. What's presented to you above is the video of what some call the greatest speech ever given in history, Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream Speech". Below, the text of the speech.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

As we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied, as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

Giants Select Jerry Reese As General Manager - Only Third Black GM In NFL History - NFL.com

Giants tap Jerry Reese as general manager
NFL.com wire reports


EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (Jan. 15, 2007) -- The New York Giants hired Jerry Reese as their general manager, making him only the third black GM in NFL history.

Reese, who served as the team's director of player personnel the past four years, was considered the favorite among the Giants' in-house candidates to replace Ernie Accorsi, who held the post for nine seasons before retiring.

The 43-year-old Reese will formally be introduced as general manager and senior vice president at a news conference Jan. 16, the team said on its Web site.

The only other black general managers in the NFL are Baltimore's Ozzie Newsome and Houston's Rick Smith. There are several black men who have considerable say in front offices, notably Rod Graves of Arizona, whose title is senior vice president-football operations. Ray Anderson was vice president of the Atlanta Falcons for the past four years before moving to the NFL in August as senior vice president of football operations.

There were seven black head coaches in the NFL last season, the most ever. Two of them, Dennis Green of the Cardinals and Art Shell of Oakland, were fired after the season, although Shell will remain in the Raiders front office.

Critics of the NFL's minority hiring policy have generally praised the league for increasing the number of minority coaches, but have pointed out that there is a void in the front office.

Last month, when Reese was mentioned as the favorite for the job, Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy, the senior black head coach, said: "That's great -- just to have an African-American mentioned that way is great."

A graduate of the University of Tennessee at Martin, Reese first joined the Giants' scouting department in 1994 after working on the coaching staff at his alma mater.

As the Giants' player personnel director, he oversaw all aspects of college scouting and had most of the responsibility for the draft. Reese previously served as assistant director of pro personnel for three years.


AP NEWS
The Associated Press News Service

San Francisco-Based KNBR's Rod Brooks -- Who's Black -- Puts Down Black Coaches

Last Monday, January 8th, San Francisco-based KNBR's Rob Brooks (pictured) said, in response to a take that one college team should hire a black coach, "Notre Dame tried one of those and look what happened to them."

"One of those," sounds like a disease the way Brooks put it.

That comment led me to write this email to members of the California sports media community -- an email list that includes Tony Bruno and Rod Brooks. It's not just an email denouncing what Brooks said, but how KNBR conducts it's business. But more to the point on Martin Luther King's Birthday, it's terrible to know that there are African Americans who would waste no time in putting down someone else because they're black.

Here's what I wrote:

Greetings All,

I understand "Mr C In Heaven" but I have this take: what KNBR's Rod Brooks says goes out to millions of people locally in Northern California -- it's not small time at all. The San Francisco Bay Area has the highest ad costs per ratings point of any part of the country.

Some of those listeners form their opinions from what they hear on KNBR. I hear it from time to time, someone litterally parroting what was said on KNBR. People use sports talk radio to essentially "think" for them. And the more the message touches that person's more baser feelings -- like racial matters -- the more likely it is to stick. But that doesn't make it OK to be racist; indeed, it's every reason why one should not be. For all practical purposes, Brooks is a kind of role model, though a negative one at this time. I leave room for improvement.

That's why what someone like Brooks said Monday was socially irresponsible, not to mention a reflection of self-hatred. It does a lot of damage to the matter of the deconstruction and ultimate destruction of the racist way; what better tool to maintain racist thoughts amoung whites, Latino's, and Asians than a black person who puts other blacks down by referring to African American coaches as "one of those" tried by Notre Dame, as if black coaches were viruses.

Grrrr....

Moreover, it -- this race-based approach -- is not even good ratings at all. Just because KNBR may claim good Arbitron numbers doesn't mean they can't be better. I'd be willing to bet that KNBR's numbers are actually terrible when compared to their potential. I could go on about how the radio station's website system is not only poorly designed, but not engineered for it to rank high in any Google-search of note related to KNBR's sports content and not even well-coordinated with its radio shows.

This hurts the radio shows and rating potential. If I bought KNBR, I'd tear it all up and rebuild from the bottom up.

Plus, KNBR's people -- it's personalities -- come off more often than not as "Angry white guys" -- attempting to stop any and all conversations about race by saying "You're playing the race card" and using this childish Right Wing term as if it was a kind of conversational hand grenade -- and it's almost laughable that a prominent black personality would assist them. But that seems to be what's happening. I've heard this before from others and as a constant listener to the show, I can document and write a book on them. People don't want to hear this at all. Please knock it off.

KNBR does not know how to reach the fan base of any of the major Bay Area sports teams. The smaller college sports organizations get no mention or play at all. The sponsorship program is lacking. KNBR knows how to develop personalities, but misses the boat in building a cohesive media information system. By a country mile. (And yes, I know what the answer to this is.) Moreover, there's little in the way of really substantive sports talk conversation. Here's an example:

On January 8th 2003, the Philadephia Eagles beat the Green Bay Packers in a wild-card playoff game which featured a 4th and 26 convertion by Eagles QB Donovan McNabb. On a recap of the game on KNBR, Ralph and Tom had on as a guest a female beat writer from Phili who really knew her stuff. She explained that the Packers middle linebacker was out of position and should have been deeper than he was in the coverage, thus allowing the pass completion.

While she talked, Ralph and Tom had little to offer to keep the conversation going. It was disheartening for me. Obviously by my recall of the event, it had an impact on me. I then started to monitor sports talk radio here with the "null hypothesis" that there was little of substance -- discussion of strategy, business, law, etc. -- that was offered. To date, I've had little content example from KNBR to cause me to refute my initial hypothesis.

Another example was when I was on as a guest regarding the Super Bowl and Jerry Brown in 2005. Rather than ask me substantive questions about why Oakland came to within eight NFL owner votes of landing the game Jacksonville won, Rod Brooks decided to take me on regarding Oakland as a host city.

It was not a smart move on his part, as I knew my subject and he did not. Moreover, I was very angry that Brooks and KNBR would continue a pattern of not only non-support, but attempted destruction of our Super Bowl Bid efforts and attempts to insult me.

My own mother observed that KNBR "could not stand someone who was smart and Black." I reminded her that it was radio, but then I thought about the matter from her point of view and the fact that I was assuming some KNBR people didn't know I was Black when they may have, and then recanted my initially polyanic view. I started thinking about my past experiences with KNBR.

It started in 2000, when Radnich had me on and asked how could we sell out the Super Bowl, when the Coliseum had sell out problems. Why ask that? I pointed out that all Super Bowls were sellouts. But here I am BUSTING MY ASS to bring this thing to the Bay Area, and KNBR's taking pot shots at me and the bid. It's like getting shot by what are supposed to be your own troops.

I told Agnew about this -- actually was real pissed about it -- because it would NOT have harmed KNBR to be a booster for the Super Bowl. Not at all. The Bay Area needs the shot in the arm. But we can't improve economically with KNBR pulling the rug out of what we do. It's stupid. It really is. I could not get over what the reason for the treatment was and so then, absent any logical explanation, figured that maybe my Mom had a point. After all, KTVU has never treated me that way; not at all and not even to this day. Neither does KPIX or KGO. So I had an example of how I was supposed to be treated by the media in working on a Super Bowl Bid and doing anything of substance in the community.

Man!

It's one thing to ask good questions, but the ones aimed at me were just plain bad and nasty. All of my friends who listened to me were happy that I not only defended myself, but basically made Rod sound less than informed, which was true. Moreover, it's all too common at KNBR.

The standard idea is that the people don't want substance (that's what Bob Agnew contends); but I charge that KNBR does not know how to give it in an entertaining way. When you have people who know sports so well they can talk about it in plain english, it's fun to listen to.

Tom Tolbert KNOWS basketball, and so is a joy to hear him talk on that subject, it really is. But football? KNBR has no one on the talk shows who really does know modern football strategy, methods, trends, and techniques. No one. It seems that the station has decided to allow more of the "emotion stirring" words and that opens the door to a point of view that is hard to mistake as anything but racist at times.

The point I'm making is that the station can't afford to have racist content, regardless of who it's coming from. It's bad for business. It's terrible for society. It's retrograde. PLEASE I emplore you all to reach for a higher standard. The Bay Area is becoming what it seems to hate the most in what it things Southern cities are -- racist. (Just take a look at the comments made by some Oaklanders toward Ignacio De La Fuente on Monday. Or the SF 49ers VideoGate scandal. Or the SF Police Video. Or the frightening high arrest rate for Blacks in San Francisco. I could go on and on.)

Atlanta is now much more progressive than the SF Bay Area -- ever hear the "Two Live Stews" -- but the SF Bay Area is under the age-old fantasy that it's better.

I do hope that we as a collective wake up and improve this matter.

Thanks,

Zennie Abraham, Jr.
Chairman and CEO
Sports Business Simulations
510-387-9809
www.sbs-world.com