As I sat watching ESPN’s SportsCenter in the wee hours of the morning, I was shocked as I listened to ESPN news anchor Pamela Oliver replay the statement from Notre Dame’s commentator, Paul Hornung’s.
“Notre Dame needs to lower their academic standards to accommodate the black athlete.”
Undoubtedly, Hornung’s comment was racially insensitive, but what startled me was the fact that a fellow black American sitting next to me had the gall to say he was right.
I was shocked into disbelief. Personally, I couldn’t see the truth in Hornung’s statement.
Forty-eight percent of all Notre Dame’s student-athletes are black, and in 2003, 80 percent of these student-athletes graduated.
Nonetheless, this issue goes further than the meager haphazard comments of a washed up athlete who is now confined to a booth trying to voice an opinion that has been virtually outlawed since the 60’s.
This is an issue that delves deep into the heart of every black person across this blessed nation.
At first I thought, “What? Why would someone say such a thing?”
Then it hit me. Rracial discrimination is going to exist as long as there are blacks trudging beside the barriers of racial equality leaping at every chance to become a success.
Why do we, as black Americans, lie down and wallow in the slums we have been allotted as if this is our destiny?
Why do we allow the desolate few to trample upon our rights and then back their ideals as if they are right?
They are only right if we allow them to be.
Francis Fiskey is a freshman music education student from Miami. Contact him at the_next_jordan03@yahoo.com.