11/4/2002: Gay Games open

[Cam]

If we're going to talk about White basketball players, or hell any professional sports where blacks dominate. Remember that it hasn't been that long ago that blacks were not accepted. And it wasn't protesting that brought about this change, it was some progressive white male who realize that blacks had skills and refused to care what others thought.

The most recent major controversy regarding minors in sports has been the hiring of black coaches in college football. I think there are something like 4 black coaches in NCAA division 1 football. Notre Dame's new head coach Ty Willingham is black, and his hiring brought this disparity to the medias attention, and now some people are getting up in arms and planning on "forcing" the NCAA and NFL to force teams to hire black coaches. Would this gain anything? Willingham went 7-0 to open his first season I would bet that this has more to do with future blacks being hired then anything.

For any Minority to be accepted in sports it is necessary for someone in the Majority accepting the minority and giving him the chance. But then that minority has to prove himself or herself. The sad thing is that the minority probably has to prove himself as better than the majority(The greatest human flaw is our inability to accept difference).

We have no idea what would happen if a football player came out when he was playing. I'm sure some people would have a problem with it, homophobia run rampant in our society, it's a sad fact though it's becoming a lot better. However, I would also guess that the majority of players wouldn't care as long as he played hard and produced. But the scary thing is, is that if this player came out, and really wasn't that good, and found himself cut a month after coming out imagine the controversy. People would be picketing NFL games for "discriminating against Gays". Even if this isn't the case, they would be “discriminating” against poor athletes.

Okay so I have a bunch of unconnected thoughts sprawled through this post but I guess my point was going to be that if gays are going to participate in the Olympics they have to go about it the same as any other athlete. If a gay athlete proved himself or herself, capable of competing and winning then they are going to be able to compete. Sure it’s going to create controversy, anything regarding change in minority status usually does. However, if the athlete proves that they are able to compete as well as any straight athlete they are going to be accepted by the mainstream in the end.