RACE AND ATHLETIC ABILITY

Black success in athletics has created racial problems as it has helped to overcome others. Superior performances by black athletes over whites have been met with pseudoscientific speculation that people of African descent are more physically gifted and possess natural anatomical advantages (and corresponding mental deficiencies) relative to whites. Long-held racist views about the inborn attributes of blacks surfaced anew after Jesse Owens’s spectacular performance in the 1936 Olympics.

The speculation so outraged William Montague Cobb, an African American physician and physical anthropologist, that he devoted careful study to the subject. Cobb personally examined Owens and conducted numerous scientific tests and measurements on him, and he found the track star no different from other men. Despite the research and publications of Cobb and others, some continue to postulate about the physiognomy of African Americans as an explanation for their success in sports.

The stereotype of black athletes as gifted in body but not in mind has contributed to the belated acceptance of blacks as coaches and managers and in on-field leadership positions such as football quarterback. Only in the 1980s and 1990s have the successes of such coaches and managers as Dennis Green in football, Lenny Wilkens in basketball, and Cito Gaston and Dusty Baker in baseball, as well as those of star football quarterbacks Doug Williams, Warren Moon, and Randall Cunningham, begun to break that stubborn barrier.