MY favorite actor is Sidney Poitier.

So that my comments are not completely buried where no one will ever read them (as opposed to the three people who might read them here), I transfer some comments from a discussion following a post by Paul Shirley, the likeable/tragic espn writer who is trying to make an NBA team. A summary of his points:

...nothing stirs me up like the impact of race on sports. I watched some of the NFL's Conference Championship games. ...After both games, mention was made of the race of the winning coaches. First to piss me off was the Fox Network's Joe Buck. He noted that the Bears' coach, Lovie Smith, would be the "first African-American to coach in the Super Bowl". Later, Jim Nantz pulled the same trick. He noted that Tony Dungy would complete the all-black coaching dyad. ...What neither announcer understands is that their mention of the coaches' race did nothing to aid the eradication of racism. In fact, it did the opposite. ... I understand what Joe Buck and Jim Nantz were trying to do. They thought they were doing good. But they weren't. In fact, they did harm. By pointing out the coaches' race, they emphasized that the two men are different from the rest of humanity because of their skin color. ...Racism will disappear only when a black man is a man and when a black coach is a coach.

These are my comments:

Your intentions here are good, Paul, but you're wrong.

You ARE aware of race. You DO care about race. You care enough to rant about this issue. Thou dost protest too much.

EVERYONE with sight is aware of race. It is completely and totally unavoidable.

Racism is never going to disappear. Only a white person could even SUGGEST that such a thing could be possible.

Race pervades every level of the discourse of our popular culture. Racism structures almost all of our social and economic relations in the United States (though of course it is intermingled, in a very complicated way, with class).

I think that what you were really annoyed by is the -commodification- of the race of the Super Bowl coaches. That is, what is really appalling is that the NFL has the gall to PAT ITSELF ON THE BACK now that black coaches are finally coaching the big game.

In this conversion of race into marketing, there is what Marxist theorists call the ideological turn. That is, the fact that the NFL has an essentially racist hierarchy (almost no black people in management and lots of black players) is somehow SOLVED by a single instance to the contrary. Ridiculous.

It is admirable on one level to be so outraged by race/racism that you simply negate, or deny that it exists. The next and better step is to strive to understand it.

An excellent example of race in current sports parlance is the appalling use of the word "thug." This is the most racially coded term to come down the pike in a long time, and it is almost always used in an explicitly racist way by white commentators. What the hell does "thug" mean, besides "scary black guy?" It literally means, "I am scared of this big black guy who I perceive as a threat to me." "Thugs" are violent characters, they do harm to others. So the word attaches to completely meaningless fashion accessories like tattoos and do-rags. But make no mistake: the use of this term "thug" is RACIST. It is used as a synonym for "black man" that gives someone's race a negative coding. That is the definition of racism. When a black athlete dresses in a more "white" way (that is, when the threat perceived by the race-anxious person is removed to that white person's satisfaction), then he is no longer a "thug." This is a racist economy.