Benching Bigotry

To the uninitiated, the NFL looks like a racial utopia. Those who have heard the ugly whispers in the locker room know better.

---

Illustration by Val B. Mina

By TIM GREEN

The white quarterback drops back and releases the ball. Far downfield, the black receiver soars high into the air and snatches the ball an instant before he's smashed to the turf. Touchdown! The crowd erupts and the cameras zoom in as the two men run downfield, meeting each other halfway. They embrace, pounding each other joyously on their helmets. It's a heartwarming image of racial harmony, a vision found almost nowhere else in American society.

Unfortunately, it's not the whole truth.

You would think, from watching professional team sports, that athletics and teamwork transcend the bounds of racism. That is true, but only in part. Off the courts and playing fields, inside the locker rooms, there also exists the most nefarious sort of bigotry -- the hidden kind. Because teamwork on the field requires that everyone be colorblind, the racism after the whistle blows is carefully concealed.

You would never hear a white player using racial epithets out loud in a locker room, but to hear two or more whites clandestinely whispering "nigger" is not uncommon. While some whites declare their tolerance for their black teammates with hand slaps, hugs and professions of admiration during a game, off the field they secretly spread their hatred, like a spilled drink flowing under a plastic place-mat. "You know how they are" is the code phrase white players use when referring to their black counterparts' stereotypical propensities for flaunting their wealth, wasting their money, stealing, cheating and even cowardice. Many whites mistakenly believe that a black player is less likely to take a pain-killing shot, a needle, than a white counterpart.

It is sometimes easy for white bigots to justify their own prejudice when they hear the way many black athletes talk about and treat one another. For one black player to call another "nigger," either as a term of affection or as the harshest insult, is an everyday occurrence. Many whites can't understand how the use of a word could be so common between blacks, yet at the same time so offensive when used by whites. They see this as hypocritical, and in a way it is. Black players will also show their own bigotry against other black players for their varying degrees of darkness, perpetuating the very notion that they abhor: that somehow a person's worth is tied to their skin color.

---

Next page: Working, sweating, bleeding and playing their way to brotherhood