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Originally posted by lrpalmer3
Must interject here...
Some black people are very skeptical of an average white person's integrity when dealing with race relations. You can point to slavery, but you can also point to the Jim Crow laws of the 60's or look at the statistically verified bias on your local news tonight. Putting it simply, there is mistrust.
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That mistrust is not about what happen 100 years ago, we can find examples in every day life that go on in 2005. The difference is that we are not in an age where things are as obvious and some believe because we celebrate MLK day, we have "overcome."
Quote:
Originally posted by lrpalmer3
All it takes is one or two calls seen through the subjective eyes of a committed parent to trigger this mistrust. I know we never like to admit that bad refs are out there, but maybe she has had an experience with a racist official. While I in NO WAY excuse her actions (which truly were rediculous), I emplore you all not to further instigate with questions and laughter. It solves nothing, and only serves to further embed her suspicions, which makes it tougher on the next official.
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I would probably say that the perception is that she has seen some racist refs. But a lot of that thunder is taken out if they saw more refs that looked like their team. How about put two Black refs on their games. We talk all the time about "conflicts of interest" here and how certain perceptions are there whether we like it or not. Why not put more official's of color on games where the racial makeup of the teams is obvious?
I had a varsity coach this year say before tip-off, "Why can do I only see 3 Black officials on a game like this and not when I am playing one of the white school?" Everyone in this particular game was African-American (coaches, players, fans). I do not believe that there are many white officials that go out of their way to screw black teams, but the perception is such that they feel that way. So just like the official that does not get assigned to a school where his children attend, why not assign games to take away that gripe? Then if the officiating is bad, all they can say is the officials were bad. They cannot say as easily that we participated in a racist plot.
Peace