Sport: The Black Dominance

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Wide Receiver Lynn Swann, of the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose acrobatic catches are reminiscent of ballet, feels that there is no question about it. "If I said that blacks were not athletically superior," he says, "I think I'd be kidding myself. There is something there. It seems like the black athletes are just able to do more things than the other athletes." One of those things is jumping, especially important in basketball. In fact, it is generally acknowledged in the N.B.A. that blacks have a great edge in jumping—so much so that, on the Philadelphia 76ers, a player who cannot jump well is said to have "white guy's disease." Superjumper Julius Erving notes jumping is an ability that can be developed through practice, and points to Denver's Bobby Jones and Buffalo's Gus Gerard as "exceptional jumpers for white guys." Yet he adds that "they aren't compared with other guys like myself who can jump and do something else while they're in the air."

Coach West sees "incredible physical differences" between black and white ballplayers. Says he: "It seems that all the black guys have bigger hands, they're so much quicker, they jump higher. They seem to do everything a little bit better." Chuck Fairbanks, coach and general manager of the New England Patriots, states flatly: "Blacks have the edge when it comes to speed."

Some black stars, acknowledging their better performance, have developed amateur anthropological theories to explain it. To former Baltimore Colt Tight End John Mackey, superior black speed is simply a matter of the opportunities and exposures of childhood. "I was chasing rabbits as a kid," he recalls, "and I could outrun any white guy who was just jogging up and down the street. When they turn loose African athletes who have been chasing, say, cheetahs, they will rewrite the record books. It's not because they're black but what they've been doing." Other athletes see explanations in the simple force of social pressure. In track, says Paul Warfield, the Cleveland Browns wide receiver, "I found just as many talented white performers with great speed or jumping ability as I did blacks. Yet in professional football, there seems to be an imbalance. For the white athlete, the alternatives have obviously been greater. He doesn't have to channel all of his energies into one particular area."

Warfield's thoughts echo those of many sociologists, who note that sports —and entertainment—have traditionally been used by minorities to fight their way out of the ghettos and into the mainstream of American society. In their turn, Irish, Jewish and Italian athletes and entertainers fought, ran, sang and joked their way into a society previously closed to them. The same journey is now being undertaken by blacks. Ironically, the very success of black sports stars has served to focus aspirations in the black community on athletics, a trend that social scientists—as well as thoughtful black athletes—feel is limiting the potential of many young blacks. Says Sociologist Corrie Hope of Morehouse College: "Unfortunately, I'm afraid that being successful in sports will remain for a long time the surest way out of the ghetto."