Politics in Sports Is As American As Racism – Slate Magazine

I would say that white people clearly believed something like that and promoted that ideology around sports in the United States. I would say black people believed it too, but they believed it for different reasons. They believed it because OK, in sports, if I’m given the fair opportunity, I can show what I can do because it was the belief by both parties, for a long time, that sport itself was not inherently political. It was other type of manipulations that were making it political, but that sport itself was this area that was nonpolitical. So black people believed that if only we were given our fair shot we could succeed in this. All we want is a fair shot at succeeding in this. And whites for a long time had, of course, the liberal ideology of, oh, there was fair competition, merit wins out in the end, best athlete wins.