Race in sports
It’s MLK Day. There’s much to celebrate, but there’s also much to do.
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Happy birthday, Dr. King.
Had he not been cut down by a sniper’s bullet 40 years ago this spring, Martin Luther King Jr. would be 79 years young. Today is the day we celebrate the life of the civil rights leader. Nowhere is the change that he helped initiate more evident than in sports. Yet, nowhere is the work that remains more evident.
Sports is one of those places where the color of an athlete’s skin is less important than the color of his jersey. Oklahoma fans cheer Sam Bradford the same as DeMarco Murray. Oklahoma State fans love Brandon Pettigrew as much as Zac Robinson.
Sadly, though, racism remains in sports.
A couple weeks ago, a Golf Channel anchor joked that the only way to stop Tiger Woods might be to “lynch him in a back alley.” Then, in its coverage of that incident, Golfweek used a picture of a hangman’s noose on its cover.
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