The Fifth Lap

By Gabe Cuadra     1/24/13 6:00pm

What would Martin Luther King Jr. see if he could look upon American sports today?

As we complete a week shortened by the celebration of his leadership and the remembrance of the sacrifices he and so many others made to advance the cause of civil rights, it seems appropriate to wonder how he might view the current American athletic landscape.

Would he see it as a catalyst for the continuing fight against prejudice? Would he see in sports a place in which generations of kids are provided icons across the racial spectrum?

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Would he be struck by the international and multiracial composition in today's NBA? Would he be stunned by the stardom of the Williams sisters in tennis or Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh in golf? Would he be blown away by the precision of Andrew Luck and the excitement of Robert Griffin III? Would he marvel at how when American gymnast Gabby Douglas won Olympic gold, her race did not feel like an important part of her accomplishment?

Or would he see sports from a different perspective? Would he - when faced with the fact that of the eight new head coaches hired this spring in the NFL, not a single one was of color - see it as a sign of lingering discrimination? Would he look at the commissioners of America's major sports leagues, positions still dominated by old white men, as the bitter fruits of a not-so-distant past?

And what would King see if he looked at the athletics at Rice University?

When he gave his famed "I Have a Dream" speech to the crowds in Washington, D.C., Rice still did not admit black students. Yet less than 50 years later, he would find, at a private university in a formerly Confederate state, men and women of different races and different nationalities competing together, succeeding and failing together, and forging the bonds that only such shared experiences can create. He would look into the stands and see a mosaic of the world's people in front of him, united in support of a simple yet common cause.

Would that not be for him the dream he spoke so elegantly about played out on fields and courts, around tracks and in pools?

Or would King, walking through the halls of Tudor Fieldhouse, instead focus on the fact that there are no black head coaches? And even if he did notice that, would he see it as pure happenstance, or instead as proof that his dream has not arrived in full yet?

I wonder what King would say, what he would see, what he would believe, if he stepped into today's world.

Because while his efforts helped remedy our nation's most crippling elements of race relations, in our time we are left to sort through the most complex ones.

We live in a world in which explicit prejudice has largely been reduced, yet research suggests our judgments are still subtly influenced by implicit or subconscious prejudices. We live in a world that values diversity because we know it is the best way to combat the growth of division and because we strongly suspect it can make our ideas, innovations and actions better, yet we are not sure of the best way to achieve it.

We know our capabilities are not defined by the color of our skin. But we also believe our race and heritage are among the puzzle pieces that construct each one of us as a complete person.

We celebrate and showcase our unique racial and cultural experiences through events like last year's Black Student Association Soul Night, through stories about our friends' cultures, through the values and lessons passed down to us from our ancestors of various origins. We strive to ensure everyone is equal, without requiring everyone to be the same.

We search for the appropriate next steps first by looking at the micro-experience, and then by zooming out to the macro data. And we struggle to reconcile the fact that the answers those investigations yield are not one and the same.

These are the challenges our society faces, and like in the century before, they will be challenges that play themselves out in our ballparks and stadiums. From the legacies of Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson to the days when Southern universities would sit their best white players so Northern schools did not play their black ones to the moment Douglas made headlines first and foremost as an American gymnast, without any color-coded adjectives attached, sports have alternatively given us glimpses of the future, kept us firmly stuck in the past and served as reflections of the present.

So I cannot help but wonder: If Martin Luther King Jr. could look upon American sports today, what would he see?

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