The Fox Whole # 6

After Palmer missed the call, Maxwell immediately went into his diatribe, saying that Palmer should go back to the kitchen.  His partner tried to bail him out, but Maxwell countered with a "Get back in the kitchen and fix me some bacon and eggs!" Honestly, I thought we were past this. Palmer can officiate hundreds of NBA games, but once she makes a mistake she’s treated as if she’s supposed to be some sort of house servant? That is absolutely classless.

Granted, racism is always ugly when it rears its head, but this is the 21^st century, you would hope that everyone today would understand the hardships that African-Americans had to go through (there are few things easy about slavery). Maybe somebody should buy Mr. Maxwell a book on African-American history, so he can read about how brutal life could be for blacks in America over the past few centuries.

It’s even more disgusting to see such blatant racism celebrated on the airwaves during a sports broadcast. Wasn’t it more than 50 years ago when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in sports? Is Maxwell trying to re-establish that barrier, one basketball official at a time?

To me, there is no place for racism in America and Maxwell ought to be ashamed. Of course, his weren’t the only shocking comments on race this week as it appears Jesse Jackson also has an axe to grind against African-Americans. Check out these quotes from a story in USA Today about Jackson’s recent trip to Congress.           

“ When African-American coaches do well, we’re delighted,” Jackson said. “Only the ignorant are surprised.”

“Sadly, if the pace of progress (for black coaches being hired in college football) remains the same, it will be approximately 80 years before we reach a percentage that even approximates the number of African-Americans in the general population.”

“I think we have all the tools in place. What we don’t have is talented, superb African-American coaches brought into the informal networks of athletic directors.”

Now, those quotes can be a dry read, especially in the context of a longer story, but don’t let Jackson off the hook simply because his racism is surrounded by boring. To get around this, you have to employ a little trick that most media analysts use - it’s called “reading between the lines.” Here’s what I took from his statements.
 

1.      “What we don’t have is talented, superb African-American coaches.”

2.      “Sadly, if the pace of progress continues, it will be approximately 80 years.”

3.      “Only the ignorant should be surprised.”

Outrageous! Only the ignorant are surprised that it will take 80 years to get more talented black football coaches? Is he aware that both coaches in the Super Bowl this year were African-American? Go ahead and call me ignorant, but it is my belief that there are a ton of overly qualified black football coaches today… the only problem is that they aren’t given a fair chance. As long as the public keeps hearing quotes from people like Maxwell and Jackson, it doesn’t look like that will ever change.

You can reach Mark Fox at the This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it